The host community, led by Fr Domingo Yanqui, welcomed the Council together with the Salesians Fr Dario Sobczak, Fr Guillermo Maza and Fr Pablo Tran. The meeting provided an opportunity to share in the daily life of a mission which, for decades, has been proclaiming the Gospel in one of the country’s most remote areas.
The Provincial Council began with a time of prayer and reflection, invoking the light and wisdom of the Holy Spirit to guide the proceedings of the meeting. Subsequently, the Provincial presented the main items on the agenda, highlighting in particular the report on the provincial visit carried out in the preceding days at Monte Salvado. Furthermore, during the working sessions, Fr Alcas Michilot presented various topics of provincial interest.
One of the central points was a reflection on the future of this missionary presence. As is well known to the Salesian Family, the Monte Salvado community is currently undergoing a process of discernment. However, far from adopting a pessimistic outlook, the Council sought to analyse, with serenity, responsibility and hope, the possible ways forward to continue supporting the indigenous communities and the local population.
The visit also provided an opportunity to recognise the enormous evangelising work built up by generations of Salesian missionaries who, through sacrifice and fidelity, have sown the seeds of faith and promoted human development in this jungle region. To name all the Salesians of Don Bosco who have passed through these places would take many pages, but two in particular are remembered: Fr Horacio Loi and Fr David Fachinello. Amidst logistical difficulties and current challenges, Monte Salvado continues to be a living sign of the Salesian commitment to the peripheries and to those places where the Church’s presence remains urgently needed.
The session concluded with a renewal of the provincial commitment to discern the future with a pastoral vision, listening to the reality on the ground and always seeking the greater good of the mission entrusted by God and envisaged by Don Bosco for the peoples of the Amazon.
At the end of the visit and the sessions of the Provincial Council, a conviction shared by all participants remained: the most important aspects of a mission cannot always be expressed in figures, reports or statistics. The famous saying by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – the author of The Little Prince: “What is essential is invisible to the eye” was experienced first-hand by the members of the PER Provincial Council during their time at Monte Salvado, where they were able to sense the simple faith of dozens of communities, the silent gift of the hundreds of missionaries who have passed through, the daily and urgent challenges of evangelisation, and the hope of the people, who continue to believe in the Salesians and in the Missions of the Peruvian Jungle.
“The most important decisions for the mission arise from attentive listening, from being close to people, from sharing in the life of the communities, and from contemplating reality as it is. Only through this direct encounter is it possible to discern, with responsibility and hope, the paths that God continues to open up for the Salesians of Don Bosco today, in these mission lands,” conclude the Salesians of the PER Province.
