Maltese bishop laments dwindling missionaries

In spite of a lack of vocations in Malta, the island should still be generous and encourage young seminarians to go to the missions, according to the Maltese bishop of the Umuarama diocese in Brazil, Vincent Costa.

Mgr Costa said in an interview during a recent visit to Malta that contrary to what used to happen when he was a seminarian, very few Maltese were going to the missions.

This was causing a problem since missionaries were getting older and they were not being assisted by younger ones who would eventually replace them.

Mgr Costa said that following a visit to Brazil by Pope John Paul II in 1980, the number of Brazilian priests increased and so did the population. The number of vocations in the past five years seemed to be on the decline once again.

To prove this point he said that while he had 48 seminarians five years ago, now he only had 20.

Mgr Costa, a Jesuit, joined the seminary in 1964. The second Vatican Council was being held and this had urged a spirit of renewal within the Church and for missions to be given an impetus.

Malta's Archbishop then was Michael Gonzi and the seminary's rector Mgr Victor Grech. Mgr Grech, Bishop Costa recalled, used to encourage seminarians to go to the missions and those who chose to do so were sent to cover their four years in theology in their mission country of choice.

Following his four years of philosophy in Malta, young Vincent, then 19, left for Brazil to start studying theology. He returned to Malta for his ordination in December 1972, going back to Brazil soon after.

By now Fr Costa was fluent in Portuguese and he was appointed parish priest of Maringá in the state of Parana, which is in the south of the country. His job was to coordinate the pastoral work of the diocese.

In 1987 he went to Rome to take a doctorate in theology. Back in Brazil, he focused on teaching theology at the seminaries of Londrina and Cascavel.

In 1998, he was nominated bishop. He was ordained auxiliary bishop of Londrina in September 1998 and in October 2002 was appointed diocesan bishop of Umuarama, also in the state of Parana.

In this state, having 19 dioceses, there is another Maltese bishop - Walter Ebejer OP.

Mgr Costa said the Umuarama diocese was formed in 1973 with 30 towns (39 parishes). The current population is 364,000.

There are 65 priests and six permanent deacons, 29 seminarians, 59 nuns and 669 basic Christian communities. The diocese also has 2,798 Bible groups and 17,973 pastoral agents.

Bishop Costa's priority in the diocese is priest formation and recently he sent two seminarians to study in Rome.

Although the people of Brazil participated extensively within the Church, Bishop Costa said protestant groups were gaining a stronger foothold.

This provided the Church with a challenge to evangelise better and as a result a survey was held in all parishes and communities within the diocese. A pastoral plan was then drawn up for the next four years.

The aims of the plan are for the Umuarama Church to be missionary. As part of this plan, every home in the diocese will be visited three times a year for prayer, to listen to what the people have to say and to spread the Word of God. This service is being coordinated by the basic Christian communities.

A charitable service which is being offered is that of helping people through nine-day novenas following the loss of loved ones.

Another project is aimed at combating the institutionalised causes of poverty and injustice of Brazil. The Church, Mgr Costa said, could not evangelise unless people who were suffering were helped.

The diocese also wanted to help poorer ones and as a result it was twinned with the diocese of Humaitá in the Amazon. A two-year course aimed at preparing missionary priests and lay persons to spend some time working in this diocese was being prepared.

Mgr Costa said that his diocese wanted to send missionaries to Humaitá even though four of the parishes in his diocese did not have a priest.

Umuarama is an agricultural area and when the diocese was set up the population numbered 600,000. But people were constantly leaving because of unemployment. Frost, Bishop Costa said, had damaged coffee crops and it had destroyed many soya bean and sugar cane fields.

Although Brazilians were very hard working, the country's wealth was not well distributed and there was corruption, theft and squandering of money.

Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, elected in 2002, had made great strides forward for the country but the internal state of the economy was not allowing him to do as much as he wanted. And although social measures had increased greatly, Brazil's international debt was not giving him the freedom he needed. But at least, his economic policy favoured employment and the government was buying land to give to a people known in Brazil as the "landless".

The problem was that the situation in the country was so bad that the president required at least another term to be able to implement all his promises, the Bishop said.

And for many people in Brazil this government was the last hope. Although Mgr Costa has lived most of his life in Brazil and the South American country is what he calls home, he still loves Malta and feels that he appreciates what is beautiful in his country of birth more than the Maltese living here.

He sees the Maltese family as very beautiful, built on love, respect, partnership and friendship. And this was only one example, he said.

http://www.diocesedeumuarama.org.br