by Maria Gomes

Five centres have been established in north and northeast Dhaka where the Brahmaputra flows into the Ganges. They have vocational schools and hostels to young tribal people who come to the city from villages to work in factories. On 9 May, the archbishop of Dhaka inaugurated a new pastoral region.

Dhaka (AsiaNews) - Bearing witness to the Word of God for the past 15 years among Bangladesh's most isolated and less known Christian communities through work apostolate and education has led to the establishment of five centres in north and northeast Dhaka, where the Brahmaputra River (known as Jamuna in Bangladesh) flows into the Ganges.

Besides the usual religious functions, these centres offer the services of a vocational school and a hostel for tribal Koch and Garo people. They must develop however a new pastoral approach to respond to the country's rapid evolution. For this reason, representatives from these centres came together for the first time on 9 May at a meeting where, Mgr Patrick D'Rosario, archbishop of Dhaka, recognised their status as a new pastoral region.

In light of Bangladesh's industrial development in the early 1990s and the rapid urbanisation that followed, the arrival of large numbers of young people from rural areas in search of work has generated a new labour force made up of largely unskilled workers unprepared for the challenges that face them.

At the same time, some 15 years ago Fr Dominic Rozario, a Bangladeshi priest who taught at the theological seminary in Dhaka, began visiting Christian families living in isolated areas where no Christians were thought to live. Quickly, he established relations with these people. Expressing an interest in Sunday Mass, some indigenous Koch and Garo tried to get in touch with him.

Fr Carlo Dotti, a missionary with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), joined Fr Rozario in celebrating the liturgy, later followed by another PIME missionary, Fr Gian Paolo Gualzetti, who was working in Mirpur, on the northern outskirts of Dhaka, an area that was undergoing rapid urbanisation in the 1990s.

Fr Rozario had his first practical results in Mirpur, an area where factories were opening on a daily basis. Here Fr Gualzetti opened up his church to young men and women coming to town looking for work, including students at a technical school in Dinajpur run by Brother Massimo Cattaneo.

Eventually, the two missionaries bought some land where they set up the Jesus Worker Centre that included a vocational school and a hostel for people preparing to enter the workforce.

At the same time, Frs Angelo Canton and Gianantonio Baio, both PIME missionaries, opened two other centres in Kewachala, northern Dhaka.

In the beginning, only small groups of tribal people and Bangladeshi Christians went to these centres for the basic education they offered. Eventually, their mission opened up to non-Christians coming to the city in search of work from isolated areas.

Fr Arturo Speziale (PIME) set up the latest centre. It includes two hostels and caters to a fishing community on the Brahmaputra. Converted and later abandoned by Baptist missionaries, these fishermen and their families helped Fr Speziale come into contact with indigenous Koch.

With the assistance of local nuns, he was able to open a school providing a basic education to tribal boys and girls, each housed in their separate hostel.

• bangladesh
• christian
• missionaries
• indigenous
• koch
• garo