AFRICA/MOROCCO - "Marhaba bikum!": Friendship, relationships, life on the margins of society

Wednesday, 7 June 2023

SMA

Fès (Agenzia Fides) - "Marhaba bikum! Welcome! This is how one is welcomed in Morocco and in particular in Fès where we live", said Sister Giulia of the Little Sisters of Jesus, who lives and works in Fez with three other sisters. Together with Father Matteo Revelli of the Society for African Missions (SMA), and students and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the missionaries who live in the medina work in a public hospital thanks to an agreement between the Moroccan state and the Catholic Church and run, among other things, a ceramics workshop in the working-class neighbourhood. They also work in the Catholic parish.
"Like everywhere we are," Sister Gulia continues, "our life in Fez is made up of our everyday relationships. First of all, relationships in the local community, which in this sense is a real laboratory in which, through the challenge of differences in attention, reception, listening and caring for others can grow".
"The hospitality we receive from people allows us to live our apostolate, which is essentially, that of friendship", explains the nun. "We choose to live like the people, the most marginalized: in the choice of place and type of home, work, way of cooking and eating and, here, in speaking the Arabic language, in which we also pray and which we learn especially with them. This is how we try to witness and receive God's love, contemplating Him present in our daily lives", concludes the missionary.
This testimony reached Agenzia Fides today, June 7, 2023 on the day of the funeral of Father Marco Prada, editor to date of SMANotizie 2023 in which Father Marco himself participated in its drafting. Grateful for the precious contribution that the missionary has given us in all these years, we remember him in our prayers with immense esteem and deep affection. (AP) (Agenzia Fides, 7/6/2023)

SMA


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