A priest immersed in the sub-world of the
street boys of
I
am Renato Chiera and I have been in
I
must say that if I am still a priest and happy to be so, it is because I sank
the roots of my life in the spirituality of unity which I got to know during
the seventies.
The
choice of God, and not of the priesthood, the discovery of God as Love who
calls us to love and to be like a family, and above all my encounter with Jesus
in his abandonment, have been the cornerstones of my life.
First
of all Jesus forsaken formed me as a person. My unresolved affective problems,
which caused me much suffering, my shortcomings, sins and miseries which
blocked me, detachments and illness all gradually became countenances of him to
be loved and which bore new life.
Then
Jesus forsaken placed deep roots in my pastoral choices. One night, returning
from
When
I arrived home a teenage boy, who had been waiting for me, handed me a weapon:
“Take this pistol. I don’t want to steal and kill anymore.” When I returned home another night, I
was told that Pirata had been shot, a boy I had taken in when the police were
looking for him to kill him. He had changed: he was baptized and was preparing
for his first holy communion. I saw the blood in front of the door of my house
and shuddered. I ran to the hospital and found him lying on an icy stone slab,
with a bullet wound in his head. I wasn’t able to save him!
I
recognized Jesus forsaken asking me for help in a boy who explained that 36
boys and young men had already been killed in the month of March alone in my
parish; he showed me a list of 40 others “doomed to die.” “The first name on
the list is mine,” he said. “I don’t want to die. Can’t you do anything?”
It
was Jesus who didn’t want to die and who was asking for help, and I was afraid
to take the risk. I must be like a sponge that absorbs what is not good and
loveable.
It
was as if God were telling me: “Renato, step aside. The Casa do menor is my work, not yours. Up until now you were the
protagonist. Now let me bring it ahead.” And the Casa do menor greatly improved during my long absence.
I
welcome Jesus forsaken each time I have to bury the boys we weren’t able to
save or who went back to the street or to drugs after having given them so much
love. What’s the point of loving if there aren’t any results? But I don’t have
to change anyone; I have to love and that’s all.
A
year ago I had to bury nine boys in one single day. They had been killed in a
massacre by the police. I was there only to absorb a suffering that had no
explanations, and to offer it like Mary desolate at the foot of the cross. Next
to the mother of
We
have become a sign and model of social politics; people calls us from many
different areas because we have something that makes a difference.
Jesus
forsaken and Jesus risen are the same, and I spontaneously ask God to suffer
more, because it is from this that more life will always be born. It’s
worthwhile living in this way, because all that is ugly is transformed, it
becomes grace, light, life.