“Kidnapped” by Christ and the poor: Fr. Bossi tells his story in a book
Milan (AsiaNews) – Much has been written of father Giancarlo Bossi and of his kidnapping. Up until now, however, what has been missing is a portrait of the man in his daily life, a profile of this missionary capable of delving into the reasons for his missionary choice and the secret of his witness of the faith. Now, this void has been filled by a book, “Rapito” (Kidnapped), published by Editrice Missionaria Italiana (EMI) on sale in bookshops (pp. 128, 10 Euro), in which father Bossi gives an account of his life and of himself.
The subtitle reads: “Forty days in the hands of rebels a lifetime in the hands of God”. It is further developed in the preface by PIME Superior General father Gian Battista Zanchi: “Fr Bossi’s kidnap takes on a deeper meaning when read in the light of the missionary vocation which brought Giancarlo to the Philippines (had it been otherwise it would merely have been the case of a misadventure with a happy ending). At the same time the ‘extreme’ experience of the kidnapping itself throws light on ‘daily’ missionary life. Before having been kidnapped by a band of delinquents, father Giancarlo – he himself says so – was spiritually ‘kidnapped’ by the radical nature of the Gospel and Christ’s appeal ‘Go throughout the world’ and to the poor, who are the privileged. The kidnap therefore can no longer be read as an unpleasant incident along the way, but rather as a milestone in a much longer journey: the missionary journey”.
In the book, father Bossi re-evokes the beginning of his missionary vocation. Starting from the family hearth of Abbiategrasso, he retraces his 27 yeas if missions in the Philippines, during which he touched the lives of diverse places, experiencing both the love and solidarity of the ordinary people and the hostility of the fundamentalists.
The book is much more than a diary of his captivity, an experience which father Giancarlo in spite of everything comes to judge as «a time of grace », almost as an Exodus of purification and a return to the essentials. Fr. Bossi is categorical regarding the motives behind the kidnap: money and not anti-Christian persecution. Regarding his kidnappers he says: “Simple criminals, they did not do it because they were Muslims. The Muslim-criminal equation is wrong”. And yet in spite of all of this, the book – complete with pages of great beauty in which the missionary reflects on forgiving his kidnappers - is not without reflections, at times provocative, on Islam and the commitment to dialogue. This for Fr. Bossi must begin with mutual respect, “otherwise it is not authentic”.
Complete with photo inserts and a dossier on the reality of Mindanao by Stefano Vecchia, the book is enriched by the testimony of Pino Scaccia, the Tg 1 correspondent who followed Fr. Bossi’s odyssey first-hand and an introduction by Gerolamo Fazzini, co director of Mondo e Missione.
.png)
