Africa – Visit by Fr. Luca Barone, new President of “Missioni Don Bosco,” to the AOS Province concludes

He was accompanied by two members of the “Missioni Don Bosco” staff, Ester Negro, from the Communications Department, and Lucia Brigiati, from the Projects Department; Fr Gabriele Pipinato, Director of the Service for Charitable Interventions for the Development of Peoples of the CEI (Italian Episcopal Conference), and Dario De Nicola, project investigator for the same office.

The missionary trip had several meanings: the closeness of the entire Congregation to the confreres who find themselves in the most peripheral situations in the world and the observation in person of the works activated thanks to the aid coming from thousands of benefactors in Italy.

The delegation was received and accompanied at all stages by Fr Sony Joseph Pottenplackal, Provincial Economer of AOS, and Fr Peter Abeku Dughan, PDO Coordinator for these two countries, and was welcomed with great enthusiasm by the directors and Salesians of the communities visited.

“Having wanted, prepared, and conducted the visit together as the Italian Church and the Salesian Congregation is first and foremost a significant and evangelical sign of communion,” explained Fr Barone, “which allowed the CEI leaders to learn firsthand about the Salesians’ mission in those countries, especially in frontier areas such as work in prisons, projects for the protection of abused children and street children, as well as work in schools, parishes, mission stations, and youth centres,” he added.

At the same time, the visit allowed Fr Luca Barone and his team to visit and engage with other religious and diocesan missions supported by the CEI in those lands.

In conclusion, Fr Barone said he was convinced that “making a joint mission visit is not primarily a technical operation of project evaluation or exchange of good practices and study for future support interventions, but rather an experience of Church and therefore of authentic fraternity, in which we go to meet people, religious and lay, who give their lives in the field of mission, bear witness to the Gospel with fidelity to their vocation, and use their intelligence and heart to proclaim the Gospel and build a future of hope for young people, sharing with them dreams, difficulties, and concrete resources.”