To celebrate World Mission Day this year, Switzerland has chosen to give a voice to Paraguay, a Latin-American country in the grips of serious economic and social problems. The project is being run by “Missio the Pontifical Mission Aid Society” which has marked the event by publishing a rich dossier on Paraguay, containing testimonies of bishops, laypeople and religious, guidelines for reflection and liturgies to help parishes, groups and communities to celebrate Mission Day next Sunday. “Each year, Pontifical Mission Aid says the dossier gives, in rotation, the floor to a Church of another continent. Each country enables us to rediscover the Gospel from a different perspective. Truly, mission is an exchange between Churches” and these reciprocal exchanges “turn all the local Churches into a single family. That the sense of the collection to be held next Sunday”. In Paraguay, unemployment amounts to 16% of the population and over 150,000 families work in the service of big landowners. A very religious people, with deep devotion to Mary: on 8 December, tens of thousands of pilgrims go to the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Caacupé. The Church, which was in the past the victim of martyrdom and persecutions, is now particularly involved in the defence of the poor and in the promotion of an “honest, brotherly and sharing Paraguay”. In Asuncion, for example, the diocese has involved 70 young people in a project for the promotion of peace in families: they have been sent in pairs to all the parishes in the capital to collect war toys (toy rifles, machine guns, swords, knives and daggers). “At the end explains auxiliary bishop Ricardo Valenzuela Rios the toys were broken and ‘buried’ in a large hole in the ground, on top of which a dove was placed as a sign of peace”. Archbishop Jorge Livieres Banks, president of the Episcopal Conference of Paraguay, has expressed the gratitude of his Church to the Swiss Church in a letter to Missio, which reads as follows: “The economic injustices, the successive international conflicts and the continuous political disorders have dramatically impoverished the population, disintegrated social life and cultural traditions and strongly weakened the organization and capabilities of the Church’s pastoral action”. Even Swiss children will be involved in a project which has as its slogan “Tesape Pora, the house that illuminates life”: they can make their contribution to Paraguay by helping to support a residential home for youngsters in difficulty, situated at Villarrica (200 km from Asuncion); it was founded by the Daughters of Mary Auxiliatrix in 1993. The house provides a refuge for children and teenagers from broken homes, aged from 4 to 18.
