"Caritas for Africa, Caritas Africa for Caritas Internationalis"
Card. Michael Czerny S.J.

(From Card. Czerny's address during the Caritas Africa regional assembly held in Rome
from 07 to 10 May 2023)


Let there be “Walking together” ...

“Walking together” is a very rich and simple image. Thinking about the mission and mystery of Caritas Africa, it comes almost spontaneously to understand “walking together” in the sense of “accompanying.” It is in accompanying that Caritas makes its contribution to the building of a synodal Church, once again along three lines.

... by taking care

The first way, almost obvious when thinking about what Caritas normally does especially at the local and parish level, is “taking care” of those who ask to be heard and seek support. “Taking care” plays out concretely in the four verbs that Pope Francis uses to describe appropriate responses to the needs of migrants and refugees: to welcome, to protect, to promote, and to integrate. These four phases apply to supporting all the poor and marginalized who yearn to develop their capacities and become progressively more autonomous. Thanks to the Federation, Caritas generously, quickly and effectively coordinates responses to emergencies that occur in every corner of the globe. Caritas is the maternal face and fatherly hands of a caring Church drawing close to those most in need.

... by advocating

A second form of support is Caritas active in advocacy, in socio-political and socio-cultural engagement. Thus, the public can recognize the demands of the poorest, giving rise to better policies to protect and promote their human and civic dignity. Paternalism is what threatens this form of accompaniment. The poor need a sounding board, not someone speaking for them and thereby silencing their own voices. Let’s be inspired by the World Meetings of Popular Movements, which I have personally followed since their inception, and in particular by the way Pope Francis recognizes Popular Movements and their members as interlocutors and bearers of an original point of view that is capable of formulating proposals for reforming society. The Holy Father underlines their constructive role in the public space.
 

... by encountering the poor
 
Thirdly, Caritas accompanies the Church community to encounter the poor. No Christian person or community, whatever their role, can purport to witness to charity without encountering the poor. This pastoral role uniquely reveals an otherwise unknown face of the Lord. “That is why,” Pope Francis explains,
I want a Church which is poor and for the poor. They have much to teach us. Not only do they share in the sensus fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives and to put them at the centre of the Church’s pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them (EG 198).

 ... by being companions on the road 

Besides accompaniment, there is another meaning of “walking together” that challenges Caritas in Africa today and tomorrow: it is being fellow-travellers or “companions on the road”. This involves practicing listening, not only with those in need who knock on our doors, but more generally with many who make up our complex societies and their numerous peripheries; and with institutions and organizations, Christian and public and private, that are committed to protect the poorest and promote justice, fairness and sustainability. Doing things in a synodal way means building alliances with common goals, sharing resources and laying competition aside. Indeed, it means choosing and preferring actions carried out together over those that we carry out alone, even when this requires straining to dialogue and undergoing conflict and risking looking like losers.

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