Rome (Fides Service) - Italian Father Francesco Bertolina is a missionary of the priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St Charles Boromeo. For ten years he has been on mission in Novosibirsk, Siberia. His vocation matured after meeting the late don Luigi Giussani, founder of the church movement Communion and Liberation. In Siberia, Father Francesco carries the news of the Gospel to people in small villages spread around Siberia’s main city Novosibirsk; many villages are hundreds of kilometres away. He undertakes the long, arduous journeys with the serenity of one who knows he is on mission for the Lord. We give below an except from the diary to which Father Francesco adds every day, the living tale of a missionary and a member of Communion and Liberation called to proclaim the Gospel in one of the most remote and hostile areas of the planet.
“Recently, as I have been running to and forth between Polovinnoje and Krasnazjorsk to meet people preparing for confirmation or baptism something once said by Padre Pio keeps passing through my mind:“ For these people we must be like the womb of a mother”.
Last week in one of the villages I met a Russian grandmother who had been baptised as a child. Before moving to Novosibirsk, she lived Kazakstan where she was a state employee. I started instruction with her because she asked to receive all the Sacraments of the Catholic Church. A few days ago she made her first confession. It is amazing to see the lucidity of this woman. She has a daughter who many years ago was raped and as a result could not have children. One day on her way to work she saw a little bundle of rags lying on the roadside. Inside the bundle was a baby girl wearing a message “do not judge too harshly. She adopted the baby taking it as a present from God. Today the little “foundling”, participates regularly at the community Mass. “For these people we must be like the womb of a mother”. (P.L.R.) (Agenzia Fides 24/02/2005 - Righe 26; Parole 369)