This is a translation
of a letter of 18 January 2015 that appeared in the French daily La Croix, from Fr Federico, a Discalced Carmelite
whose monastery in the Central African Republic is hosting thousands of people
fleeing from the civil war. I found it moving and inspiring enough to publish
it here – in part as an antidote to the horrors we are daily fed from around
the world.
Very dear friends,
It’s a little late to give you a
Christmas story, but here in the Carmel of Bangui, for more than a year now
it’s as if it was Christmas all the time.
In the morning of December 5, 2013,
towards the end of the Mass, the sound of artillery mixed itself with the chant
of our prayers. That day, apart from the looting and the houses burnt down, 500
people were killed in various parts of the city. Soon afterwards, thousands of
people arrived in our monastery. Before we knew what was happening, it was
transformed into a huge nursery.
That nursery is still there. Although
the number of little ones has diminished, there are still about 4,000 people,
who remain very attached to us. From time to time we remember with some
nostalgia those first months when the children slept in our church, the women
gave birth in the refectory, and we ate rice and beans in the dormitory
corridor. John of the Cross, the first
child born in the Carmel, now walks on his own two feet and is starting to
speak a few words. How beautiful it will be, one day, to tell him his own
story.
We are still amazed that so far we
have been able to reconcile the demands, more or less rigorous, of a Carmelite
monastery with the equally legitimate needs of thousands of refugees. Today we are so used to their presence that
we wonder how we spent our days before they came, when we were a “normal
monastery”. We would almost suggest that every monastery or convent host some
refugees, if only for a few months, in order to experience the good that their
presence does to the life of the community, to recover the enthusiasm and to
start over with a fresh liveliness.
The main change since then has been
the new setup of many tents, no longer attached to the monastery but a little
further away, about 100 feet. We regret a little not having them as close as
before. The refugees have given their new tents grand names, like “Noah’s Ark”,
“Solomon’s Temple”, “The White House” . . . The International Red Cross has
done a careful census with high-tech methods. Each head of a family has
received a card with photographs and a bar-code. According to the census, there
are more than a thousand family groups in our camp.
For December 5 of last year, we
thought that the best way to celebrate the anniversary of the events would be
to have a Mass for the dead: the victims of the war, those who died to make
peace and those who died of sickness here among us, old people and some
children. At the time of the offertory, our guests had prepared a beautiful
surprise for us, as if they wanted to offer their contribution and to beg us to
continue a little longer this miracle of the loaves. All the heads of the
various zones of the camp organised a dance and brought gifts for the
community: bread and wine, fish, eggs, bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers and
coloured fabrics (which would be transformed into twelve shirts – one for each
brother) . . . How this offering tasted
of the Gospel!
Giving a gift to a poor person is a
beautiful thing, to which we are accustomed, which gives the feeling of helping
to save humanity, and which inculcates peace of the soul; but receiving a gift
from a poor person is quite a different thing, which happens when one least
expects it and which gives you goosebumps and brings tears to your eyes.
When Christmas approached, the
dream of giving a little present to each child almost gave us sleepless nights.
Then came the miracle. In the afternoon of December 24, twenty serious
well-dressed gentlemen arrived at the monastery. They were part of a Central
African association unknown to us. They got out of their cars with five large
crates and told us “We have brought you 1,600 toys for the children between 1
and 5 years old. Please distribute them as soon as you can.” Then those
distinguished gentlemen, sent by Heaven knows whom, disappeared as they had
come. It seemed surreal. In a little over an hour we distributed the presents
and wished a Happy Christmas to all our refugees. I have to say that at that
moment I would not have wished to be anywhere else in the world than here with
my brothers and with these people.
Afterwards, we celebrated Midnight
Mass at 7 PM, which was already a sign of peace, for in 2013 we had had to move
it up to 3 PM because of the war. On Christmas morning we celebrated a dozen
baptisms. This is exceptional, for our church is not a parish. For me, a rather
improvised and autodidact missionary, they were the first baptisms I
administered in Africa. Among the baptised, there was a John of the Cross, a
Theresa, an Edith, a Joseph . . . the Carmelite heaven can rejoice! Some
Italian soldiers, led by Colonel Renna, were present also. After the
celebration, they unloaded from their armoured cars balloons, felt-tips,
colouring books and crayons, given by soldiers from Casale Monferrato, from
Turin and from Como.
In the night, there was another
surprise. It was 1.30 AM and we were all asleep, when I was called to the door.
A woman was about to give birth. I ran to wake Aristide, our novice and
competent male nurse. After examining the woman, he told me that there isn’t
time to get to hospital, as the birth was about to happen. So our roles were
reversed: Aristide became the novice-master and I the novice (a little shaken,
to be honest). In a few moments, the chapter-house was transformed into
delivery room. We even had a wooden trumpet to listen to the baby’s heartbeat.
An older woman, mother of eight
children, sat down beside the woman in labour. While her rough hands told a
worn rosary, she gave useful advice on how to push, how to breathe, and other
matters I had not learnt during my theological studies. Her serenity was
impressive, as if she knew the exact moment when the baby would be born. The
mother gave no cry, she uttered only invocations and prayers, as if she did not
want to trouble the silence of the monastery. Then a magnificent little girl
came into the world. After the cutting of the umbilical cord, the newborn was
given to the older woman who cleaned her, dressed her and received her, as if a
chain of generations, of wisdom and womanhood needed to look each other in the
eyes and hold each other, to continue the cycle of life. At that moment it was
the father’s turn. He gather up the placenta and the umbilical cord to bury
them: an ancestral rite to encourage fertility.
It was
nearly dawn. In a few moments the bell would call us to prayer. We went to the
library where there is a weighing-scale. I put the little girl on the scales.
How romantic our Bethlehem is! There are no angels, no shepherds, no Magi from
the East; but there are books by Plato, the Treatises of St Augustine, and the
Summa theologica of St Thomas Aquinas. Then I looked at the needle of the
scales: 3,500 grams of life, of hope and of peace. 
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