Catholic Mission which has not baptised anyone in 60 years because they are too busy with interculturation and dialogue. God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit completely excluded.

THE CATRIMANI MISSION IN BRAZIL, WHERE PRESENCE AND DIALOGUE IS A SUBSTITUTE FOR BAPTISM

The purpose of mission is to save souls.  Lost on him.

An article from 2018

Corrado Dalmonego: "The indigenous people can help the Church to cleanse itself".

"In addition to the ecological question, also on social organisation, we can learn the exercise of leadership."

We have a mentality that is often exclusivist, you have to accept a thing, and by accepting a, you have to eliminate b.  They tend to lump things together, I saw it with the Yanomami, one thing and the other.

The Catrimani Mission can be described as a different, special mission, with characteristics defined over more than fifty years of presence, which is what really defines this mission of the Consolata Missionaries with the Yanomami people.

Currently, together with three Consolata Sisters, Corrado Dalmolego, an Italian-born religious, lives there.  After eleven years, he has learned to live, speak and think like a Yanomami, taking on their culture and worldview through dialogue, the foundation of a mission in which no indigenous person has ever been baptised, something that goes beyond a silent testimony, because when you talk, you speak, and when you speak, you announce.

This is something that many in the Catholic Church find surprising, but which is recognised by Davi Kopenawa, the world-renowned Yanomami leader, for whom the missionaries did the right thing, without harming his people, without destroying their culture.

In view of the Synod for the Amazon, Pope Francis asks that the indigenous peoples be listened to, a fundamental attitude according to Father Dalmonego, because they could help us in the experience of our own religiosity and spirituality, help the Church to cleanse itself of schemes, of mental structures, which may have become obsolete or inadequate.

What is the Catrimani Mission?

The Catrimani Mission is a presence of the Church in Roraima among the Yanomami people, a presence that began in 1965 with the arrival of the first two missionaries who established a mission among the Yanomami people.  The first encounters with the Yanomami communities in the Ayarai, Apiau and Catrimani rivers in Roraima had taken place in the previous decade, but 1965 saw the beginning of this stable presence, which is now more than 50 years old.

It is a presence of the Church with a people that is considered by the official indigenous organisation, FUNAI (National Indian Foundation) as a people of recent contact, who have a lot of pride, a lot of strength, with their language, their culture, their customs.  It is a missionary presence that has been defined since the first years of establishment and which is characterised, I would say, by a stable permanence, by a presence alongside the communities, by a deep respect for the culture and religion of the people.

Therefore, a missionary presence that has always tried to support life, the defence of the people, the demarcation of the land, the defence and implementation of health, the fight against invasions of Yanomami land and aggressions against the rights of the Yanomami people.

What defines the Catrimani Mission today?

The Catrimani Mission is a presence that today is characterised in its missionary project by six areas of action, namely support for differentiated education and the strengthening of traditional knowledge through training, courses, research, support for the training of young people, while always paying particular attention to the valorisation of traditional knowledge.

The second area of action is that of health, although today the actions are developed by the competent government body, there is support in the Catrimani Mission region, to the communities living there, for the training of indigenous health agents and social control of health actions, and often mediation between the Yanomami and the non-indigenous agents who are responsible for health actions and assistance.

The third area of action concerns territorial management and the Yanomami's relationship with the surrounding society, everything related to land protection, political education, the implementation of indigenous territorial management actions, and reflection with the Yanomami themselves on their relationship with the surrounding society, which is very attractive, especially for young people.  Let us remember that the Yanomami society is a very young society, which is undergoing a demographic evolution, more or less sixty percent of the population is under 14 years of age.  So it is a very young population.

Another area, the fourth one, is interreligious dialogue, intercultural dialogue, living with the communities, living in close proximity, learning the language, making it possible to carry out what the Church calls interreligious dialogue, which I believe is a little exploited frontier, to which little attention is also given in the missionary field, in the field of the Church.  It seems to be something that normally appears as an annex in the documents, something that is accepted, tolerated, especially in relation to the so-called great religions, because of the number of followers or because of the strong culture of the great countries, of the great economies, where these religions are lived.  In India, in Korea, especially in Asia.

But there is little dialogue with small populations, indigenous populations with a relatively small number of members.  Dialogue is an essential component of the Church's action, of what evangelisation is, and therefore it helps us not to confuse what is proclamation with what is considered conversion.  Dialogue takes place in everyday life, in the powerful moments of rituals, and even in the research that is carried out on shamanism, on mythologies, on different knowledge, on worldviews, on visions of God, based on trust, friendship, building strong moments of dialogue, which for the Church itself are very enriching, because they help us to discover the essence of our faith, often covered up by ornaments, by cultural traditions.

It is an interreligious and intercultural dialogue with an indigenous society, a society of which the Preparatory Document for the Synod of Bishops says that it is necessary to build bridges between traditional knowledge and the modern, ecological knowledge of Western society.  As Pope Francis reminds us, it is only in the encounter, in the dialogue between different knowledges, that it is possible, either to defend this world, to build an integral ecology, or to discover the ways of the Kingdom, in dialogue, listening to the longings of different peoples, of different societies.  It is not only in being alone that solutions to problems are found, but in dialogue with other societies, with indigenous societies in particular here in the Amazon.

Another area of action is support for the training of women, knowing the leadership of women and their importance for the life of a people, of a society.  The last aspect is information and communication, be it internal, between the various Yanomami communities, communication that is carried out through instruments such as radio, messages or small informative newspapers, but also meetings, assemblies, in which leaders from various communities meet and draw common lines of life, defence of the territory, promotion of their own lives.

Also external communication, on occasions when we are allowed to take the message of the people to different bodies or accompany leaders to leave their testimonies, their messages.  These are the six areas of action in which the missionary project of the team working in Catrimani, which today is made up of three Consolata missionaries and myself, a Consolata missionary, is formulated.

How long have you been living at Catrimani?

I have been living there for 11 years.

What have you learned during that time with the Yanomami people?

You learn a lot of things by living with them.  If I had to highlight some aspects, learning the language is very important, very nice, it opens horizons, perspectives, different visions, as I mentioned before.  The question of faith, a personal deepening, the encounter with another religion, with another spirituality, also enriches our spirituality.  Then we learn the importance of community, of community life.  When we went to participate in a feast in a community a little far away, five days' journey from the mission, I went to accompany a group of 40 Yanomami who participated in that feast in the region where Davi Kopenawa lives, we went for five days, and when we arrived at the community, the feast lasted fourteen days.

When we arrived at the community, after five days on the road, I was taking a breath, and then I was thinking because I had stopped to take a breath.  What is different between the road and here?  Is there the comfort of technology?  No. Is there light?  No. Is there drinking water?  No. Do you eat the food you are used to?  No. Do you have your own books?  No. Is there a job that gives you satisfaction, which edifies you?  No. What is the difference?  It is arriving in a community, arriving in the middle of a village, it is the party, it is the meeting, it is the friendship.  This experience has awakened me a little bit to something you learn, which is the value of community life, not that it is free of difficulties, of conflicts, but I have seen the value it has.  So the Yanomami are witnesses for us to be able to appreciate the value of community life.

You also learn the value of a culture, of customs, of traditional knowledge, as this guarantees the survival of a people and constitutes a foundation on which a society is built, and if this is missing, the culture, the vision of the festivals, of mythology, shamanism, how everything could collapse, which is a very big threat, you learn this too.

What are the challenges facing the Yanomami people today?

If we listen to the yearnings, the struggles they are facing, the threats they recognise, ideally we need to listen, as Pope Francis says, as the Preparatory Document for the Synod says, we need to hear what they are saying.  In parentheses, sometimes we don't hear much, because we meet and little is heard, little is called, little is consulted with the people.  If we hear, and by living together we can pay attention, they recognise as threats the aggressions to the territory by garimpeiros, who are always present, loggers and other explorers of the forest's resources, and this is present today.

There are also threats that may seem more distant, such as large-scale mining projects on indigenous lands.  The legislation is completely oriented towards that, they say they are going to regulate mining, but it is a liberalisation of mineral exploitation, if we look at the legislation.  Even hydroelectric projects, here in Roraima, are going to affect the territory and the Yanomami communities.  Just as it happened in the 1970s with the construction of the Perimetral Norte highway and as it happened in the explosion of the search for gold, which brought forty thousand garimpeiros to Yanomami land, whose population was estimated at ten thousand people, between 1987 and 1990, before the demarcation and homologation of the Yanomami land.  This threat is still very strong.

The neglect and disorganisation of the health system, which does not manage to provide care as it should, due to difficulties of disorganisation or serious problems in administration and care.  Another thing that I would raise, from my point of view, are the policies of the surrounding society towards the Yanomami and the challenge that such a young society is called upon to face between traditional knowledge and the danger of relativising and weakening it, in the face of everything that comes from the surrounding society.

How do the Yanomami people take care of these traditions, what do they do to preserve them?

The Yanomami people are very proud of their own language, of their own identity, a word criticised today by anthropology.  They have a strong conscience, we are really Yanomami, they say, Yanomami, they have this strength.  In order to cultivate, preserve and defend it, they have a whole system of festivals and rituals.

They were also called the people of the feast, the Areajú feast, which is a big ceremony that can last several days or even two weeks, the longest I have ever participated in.  It is a feast that buries the ashes of the deceased, but it is a little bit the centre of Yanomami life, because it involves alliances, kinship, friendship, but also songs, parties, dances, ritual dialogues between leaders and different communities.  It's a bit of a summary of Yanomami life.

You spoke about the Synod of the Amazon.  How can the indigenous peoples, based on their knowledge and their coexistence with the Yanomami, help so that these new paths can really be built?

The Preparatory Document talks about this, about listening in order to find ways, to build bridges, to build dialogue in order to try to respond to the problems, to the global threats to the ecology, to the world, to cultures.  First of all, it is necessary to create spaces for listening during the Synod, these instances, not only through mediators, but perhaps, sometimes, through direct meetings.

The indigenous peoples could help with the experience of their own religiosity, their own spirituality, help the Church itself to cleanse itself, perhaps of schemas, of mental structures, which may have become obsolete or inadequate.  Pay attention to how indigenous peoples live community life, social relations, the organisation of leadership, for example.  This can also be discussed with the Church to see how the Church can organise itself, how the community organises itself, what the role of leadership is, what instruments the leaders have to correct the errors of some people, to convince.

It is the word, the ritual dialogue, the testimony, a leader is a leader to the extent that his words are followed, he does not have authoritarianism, he does not have control from above, but there is the construction of a consensus.  Why can't he enlighten the Church when it thinks about itself?  How to build consensus, how to build paths?  If we look at an indigenous community, it shows us its own ways, its own forms.  The experience of ritual, which is not something isolated, but a special time within ordinary time.  One asks when did the feast begin?  The feast began when I planted the banana plantation to have food for the guests, that is, eight months before the key moment when the feast took place.  And then, how does the fiesta take place?  There is a moment of welcome, dance, ritual dialogue, reconciliation, which sets the tone for the issues.

I also see that together with an indigenous people one learns how to relate to others, how to organise our time, the exercise of leadership, authority, the spiritual implications.  Seeing how they live, there are things they can say to the Church and to society.  Everybody knows that indigenous lands are the best protected conservation units in Brazil.  Therefore, everyone sees that indigenous peoples have practices that lead to care for the territory, despite living off its resources.

In addition to this ecological question, we can also learn about social organisation, the exercise of leadership, dialogue.  The Yanomami tend to the other, to know the other, to appropriate the other, to make the other someone similar to themselves, teaching, accepting, welcoming the other, they accept one thing without giving up the other.  We have a mentality that is often exclusivist, you have to accept one thing, and by accepting a, you have to get rid of b.  They tend to lump things together.  They tend to lump things together, I saw it with the Yanomami, one thing and the other.  On the questions about religious issues, can I communicate with God, the God of the white people, can I pray?  Can I invoke him to heal my sick child?  Can I.  For us, these are questions that leave us a bit perplexed, asking, do you give up something to appropriate something else?  No, you don't renounce, it is not necessary to renounce, it is simply to appropriate something else.

Why not also do this exercise as a Church, these experiences?  This, on the one hand, can be accused of syncretism, relativism, but we are not the owners of the truth.  Nobody recognises that.  There are documents of the Church, documents of the Council, which affirm that we all place ourselves under that light, under that mystery that nobody controls.  When we try to do this effectively, practically, when we try to put it into practice we are left with fear, can it, can't it. What are the signs that point the way to overcome that frontier?

What you say brings us to many of the attitudes and words of Pope Francis, because the way of life of the indigenous peoples helps him in the orientations he gives. Do you think that the Church is ready, willing to assume in fact, that way of living the relationship with God?

I think it is a very big challenge for the Church.  It's not that there aren't people or groups that are open, but if we look at the Church from an institutional point of view, I see a lot of fear, fear of opening up with a sincere heart to offer.  A word that the Yanomami say, it means why are you refusing me something?  I have even heard it in relation to the question of faith.  They are a so-called recently-contacted indigenous people, who live their traditional religion, Brazilian legislation is also very strict with recently-contacted peoples.

There is this suspicion, both in the case of the Church and in society as a whole, of viewing missionary actions, evangelisation actions with a lot of mistrust, because history was marked by the Church as an instrument of colonisation, cultural denial, denial of difference, it was a violent action, in which the Church also participated.  There are elements to awaken this suspicion, it is perhaps a question of changing from an attitude of arrogance to acting with the attitude of that book by two SVD missiologists, "Prophetic Dialogue", which I found very relevant for the work we do in the Catrimani Mission, two aspects that should complement each other in the evangelising action of the Church, which at certain times can be carried out more as dialogue, animated by what the authors call "humble courage" or "courageous humility".

Prophetic dialogue is that, at certain moments, you carry out more dialogue, respect, the valorisation of the culture of the other, at other moments you are called to a prophetic announcement, in the defence of rights, in the defence of life and to point out ways.  Always in prophetic dialogue, in this interplay between these two complementary aspects of evangelisation.

You speak of this attempt at positioning yourself, but you live in a mission where after sixty years nobody has been baptised, a mission of presence and dialogue.

Yes, but it is a minority expression, and often accused.

What is the reaction you feel within the Catholic Church, within your own congregation, to this attitude?

Everyone I know who worked there, they admire that way, they participated, they took part, they dedicated their lives, their years, their work, they value that way of acting, which I would not reduce to a silent testimony, because when you dialogue, you speak, when you speak, you announce.  It is not enough to think that dialogue is a pre-announcement, it is already an announcement, if you are talking to a person, you are announcing what you believe in.  There are people who defend this form and value it, even bishops, who know about it, give it value and begin to talk about it.  I remember a bishop in Ecuador who, after I spoke, then asked, you omit yourselves as missionaries, but then, every day he passed me in the corridor, shaking his head a little, and on the last day he said to another missionary, now I am beginning to understand a little.  You understand when you give courage.

There are people who understand, who give value, but even within the Church there are people who criticise, who claim that it is an omission.

In view of the Synod and the new paths that the Church wants to find, could we say that the Catrimani Mission can be a reference for these new paths?  Does the Church need more Catrimani missions?

I think that this presence in the Catrimani Mission, along with many others, is a prophetic presence for the Church, which has been listening to the people, a presence that has not ceased to be criticised or misunderstood, accused of omission.  This hurts a lot, because within the Church we are criticised for misunderstandings, people who do not know, who have not had the opportunity to participate in this experience.  It is not that these people can be accused of misunderstanding.  I believe that if someone has never had an experience like the one lived in a mission like the Catrimani Mission, they cannot pretend to understand it.

I think that more experiences like this would spread a new vision of the service of the Church, of the presence of the Church.  Now, to listen to David Kopenawa Yanomami, the indigenous leader of this people, who says that the Catrimani Mission did things right, that it did not hurt the Yanomami, that it did not destroy the culture, that it did not condemn shamanism, and therefore, he says that this is the message that you have to bring from the God who sent you.  If Davi Kopenawa himself says that, affirming that the Catrimani Mission can continue to work, because it does a good job of supporting, sustaining, and making alliances with the Yanomami, I think it is something very important.  Hearing this is an appreciation that encourages the heart, gives encouragement, it means that we are going to meet the yearnings of the people, of the communities.  Therefore, if there were more experiences like this, the Church would be greatly enriched.

This moment of the Synod is a moment in which the eyes of the whole Church, and perhaps also outside the Church, are turned towards the Amazon.  Therefore, it is an important and valuable moment for the Church to reflect on its actions with indigenous peoples, not only thinking about indigenous peoples.  I believe that this reflection can be addressed to the Church as a whole, also as a missionary paradigm, an experience of the Gospel.  I use this experience in the Catrimani mission, I have never worked in other missions, so my vision may be a little limited, but I believe that, without wanting to implant this way of acting in other places, there are aspects, stimuli, elements that can be inculturated in other places.

For example, I work there and I studied and learned the language.  If I were to work with another indigenous people, the priority for me would be to start learning the language, to be able to build bridges, to be able to get to know the heart, the depths of the people.  If someone says to me, no, but they already speak Portuguese or they already speak the national language of that country, I will say that this does not take away the importance of wanting to learn the language as well, because if we want to help a little, as much as the land is important, the language is important.  Therefore, if in the Catrimani Mission we learn the language, in other missions too, the essential thing is to learn the language, to be able to have a profound exchange of dialogue with the people, without demanding that they come to us trying to translate certain things for us, because the moment they are translated, the messages are betrayed, they are transformed.  I take the example of language to say a little bit the whole thing.  I think it is important that this could be worked on in other missionary presences.

Source

Good commentary  from 2019

Cathcon:  Not one mention of God, Father, Son or Holy Spirit.This is where the disciples of Francis are leading the Church.  We will not follow.