EUROPE/ITALY - Missionaries and Witnesses: “Gospel Speakers”

Rome (Agenzia Fides) - "Today's man listens more to witnesses than to teachers", says Pope Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi, with a widely known expression, also taken up by Pope Francis: "today's world is in great need of witnesses. Not so much of teachers, but of witnesses. Do not talk much, but talk with your whole life" (May 18, 2011). This concept describes the lives of so many people, men and women, lay and religious, who, in every corner of the world, do not spend their lives in university halls, but on the streets, in hospitals, in the most diverse places, wherever Providence takes them. Instead of flaunting their education, they live their testimony of faith in the simplicity of daily life, like their brothers and sisters.
Throughout the history of the Church there are countless of these passionate and silent witnesses to Christ and His gospel, whose names are mostly unknown to the world, but who are known to God and to those who have brought them together with Him. Remembering them is not only to look to the past, because their testimony still evangelizes today. This is the aim of the book "Parla la vita" (Tau editrice) by Father Lorenzo Piva.
The book documents the lives of "those who took the Good News to Muslim lands, those who chose to be losers to demonstrate the gospel's nonviolence, those who became defenders of the natives, those who gave their voice against tyrants, those who allowed themselves to be trampled by the aggressiveness of ideologies and those who knelt before the sick and children" (from the introduction).
From Bishops such as Peter Joseph Fan Xueyan of Baoding, China, or Christophe Munzihirwa, of Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the priests Fr. Ezechiele Ramin, Ruggero Ruvoletto, Juan Viroche: the testimonies of the lives of religious men and women religious are not lacking, such as Sister Leonella Sgorbati, martyred in Somalia; Sister Dorothy Stang, killed in Brazil; Sister Valsa John, who died in southeast India; Brother Giovanni Grigoletto, who spent his life in Africa at the service of the sick. And then there are the laity, committed to being "salt and light" in politics, like Shahbaz Bhatti, and in health care and human promotion, like Annalena Tonelli. Their images, which pass by rapidly, recounting in a few pages whole lives given to others, recall the book of Revelation, chapter 7, where before the Throne and the Lamb there was "an immense multitude, whom no one could count, of every nation, race, people and language… They are those who have passed through the great tribulation and washed their garments making them white with the blood of the Lamb".
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, writes in the introduction to the book: "Lives without sparing oneself and often broken". "Monsignor Piva had the privilege of getting to know some of the protagonists, establishing friendly relationships with them, sharing their faith and mission, and planning areas of action. Facts speak rather than voices, actions rather than reasons. In this way, they are speakers of the gospel today". (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 5/3/2022)

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