Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Ouagadougou (Agenzia Fides) - “At the end of this month of September I will leave the Camillian Mission in Burkina Faso”. These are the first words of a letter of good bye which Camillian Fr. Giovanni Grigoletto, addressed to all the friends and benefactors who supported him in these years of service in Africa. A lifetime spent with joy and total commitment to help poor sick people especially children infected with the HIV virus.
“It will not be easy, Fr. Grigoletto writes, after 35 years to leave Africa which I have loved and by which I have been loved; which I sought to help spiritually and concretely, and from which I received great esteem, affection and respect; which I have sought to ‘care for and heal' as far as it was humanly possible in its sick members, from whom I received sincere and deep gratitude. Thirty five years cannot be written off in a moment. So I ask you to sustain me with your prayers that I may undertake to the best of my ability the service assigned to me ”. “My new destination at the General House in Rome, where Saint Camillo lived and died renders me especially happy to serve the Order in the field of vocation and missionary animation, to accompany pilgrims and also to help provide home assistance to the poor sick people in the local area.
Fr Giovanni, concludes with a special thank you to the many benefactors who "enabled me in all these years, by means of adoptions at a distance, to guarantee schooling and a future, for numerous ‘little black children', and to assure them that from now on in Rome I hope to continue, indeed to intensify, by commitment.
As I thank you for all you enabled me to accomplish in these years and with the hope that you will continue to support the needy in the future, I am happy to say goodbye as we recall Blessed Teresa di Calcutta in these days on the 10th anniversary of her death, and I entrust to her intercession all your intentions”. Fr. Giovanni Grigoletto m.i. (AP) (6/9/2007 Agenzia Fides; Righe: 28; Parole:355)
