We feed, rehabilitate and love Argentina's forgotten

Dear readers,

Christmas is always a special time. In spite of all the pains and difficulties of life Christmas reassures us that we have access to a “peace which the world cannot give”. The beautiful carol “Silent Night” reminds us to pray that Christ will fill our hearts with that peace which he came to give us on that first Silent Night.

It is thanks to an Austrian priest Father Josef Mohr that we have the song Silent Night. On Christmas week 1818, he was called to perform a baptism in a small Alpine cabin high up in the mountains above the Austrian village of Oberndorf. The little wooden cabin had one low room, was badly lit and filled with wood smoke. In the centre stood a rough wooden table and two stools. It was a poor house. But on the crude wooden bed lay the young mother, smiling happily as she held her sleeping baby in her arms.

Bethlehem was foremost in Father Mohr’s mind as he baptised the child. The mountain cabin was not as poor as Bethlehem´s cave, but the peace surrounding the Alpine family and their poor home reminded him of that first Christmas night long ago. On returning home from the baptism his soul was filled with peace and joy, and with this peace of Christ in his heart, his thoughts about the events of the night took the form of a poem. Originally he called the poem Song from Heaven. Its simple words are a mirror of the beauty and joy he saw and felt on that Christmas night so many years ago.

In this part of the world, it is the custom for us Divine World Missionaries to meet socially after the busy pastoral season of Christmas. During this get together Silent Night is sung in a number of different languages including Japanese, Hungarian, Polish, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Filipino, Portuguese, Spanish and Irish. We are an international team working here in Misiones, Argentina, but the mysterious charm of this beautiful song creates a unique family bond between all of us as each one of us can claim it for our own.

Joyous Arrivals

Like the joyous arrivals in Oberndorf almost two centuries ago, St. Teresa’s Home welcomed four wonderful new arrivals during Christmas week 2004. First a twenty four year old woman, Sandra, arrived with two beautiful children: Karina aged five years and Alejandro aged two years. Sandra has severe intellectual disability and lives in a world of her own. She is continually making noise and talks very loudly to herself. Her life story is very sad, overflowing with all kinds of mental and physical suffering. We found her in an unventilated space beneath a wooden house, in an advanced malnourished and dehydrated state. She had been abused by her stepfather and other men in the neighbourhood. Her youngest child Alejandro is intellectually and physically disabled as a result of these inhumane and harsh conditions and is unable to walk. As well as being dehydrated and malnourished, both children were suffering from advanced trauma on arrival. Mabel and Fernando , a fantastic couple who have worked in our homes for a number of years, have adopted these two beautiful children and the process of healing their horrific psychological and physical wounds is now, thank God, underway.

Mario Junior

Late Christmas Eve brought us our fourth and extra special delivery, Mario Junior. He was born in September 2004, in the local hospital where I am chaplain. He suffers from both hydrocephaly and hydranencephaly, which means that part of his brain tissue is absent and that he has fluid in the brain. His seventeen year-old mother had abandoned him. Thanks to some hospital nurses, he managed to survive beyond what was expected in the hospital, but by and large he was untreated by the staff. The hospital doctors informed us that he had only a short time to live. One of the doctors even remarked that it was a waste of money to try to save him as he was sure to die very soon. It was shocking to realise that Mario Junior has spent a hundred days in a State hospital, that nothing had been done for him and that people considered spending money on him a waste. As a result he was denied appropriate treatment, including the insertion of a valve to drain fluid from his brain.

For us, Mario Junior is a child, deserving of our love and care while he is with us on this earth. As time went by we noticed that his eyes would not close properly. We began to enquire about getting him correct treatment.

By chance a visiting medical specialist from Buenos Aires came to our homes and was shocked to learn of the careless and unethical way in which Mario Junior had been treated. He offered to install the necessary valve. This seemed like a good move. However, it was only the start of a long arduous journey to help poor Mario Junior. Argentina is a very bureaucratic country and we had to seek the permission of the local judge in order for him to undergo treatment. The fact that his mother had pretended that he had died complicated matters further. We needed her permission and so the judge authorised a police warrant to detain her to enable us to get the required permission. The police search extended over the north east of Argentina. Eventually she was found and the necessary permission was given to enable Mario Junior to undergo the operation. We breathed a sigh of relief. But further complications awaited us.

We then needed to transport Mario Junior by ambulance to Buenos Aires since it would have been too risky to travel by air. The province’s Minister for Health authorised the necessary ambulance with some reluctance, but a hundred kilometres into our journey he changed his mind – stating that what could be done for Mario Junior in Buenos Aires could in fact be done in Posadas, Misiones. Thanks to helpful local journalists who had covered President McAleese’s visit, we were able to lobby the Minister successfully. The valve has been installed and the quality of Mario Junior’s life has improved a lot. He now laughs and cries and is well able to look for attention. We had the joyous occasion of celebrating his first birthday on the 14^th September last.

Farewells

There is a great family atmosphere and sense of love in our homes. This is why we feel so heartbroken and a terrible loss when family members die. Three of our residents – Miguel, Loraine and Maria Yoli passed to Eternal Life in the past year. All had been abandoned and had suffered a great deal. It can be hard for us to fully comprehend the true horror of being abandoned. The worst disease in the world is not leprosy or tuberculosis but the feeling of being unwanted, unloved and abandoned by everyone.

Maria Yoli

Maria Yoli was a very special person with hydrocephalus. Nine years ago we found her abandoned in a field with grass in her mouth. Her head was twice the size of the rest of her body and her veins were very visible. Her mother was, like Sandra, severely intellectually disabled. We took Maria Yoli to the local hospital. I personally did not think that she would survive, but little by little she improved. A valve was installed in her head and this stabilised her condition. She came to live in St. Teresa’s Home, and continued medical help, good food and lots of love worked wonders for her. She had lost the gift of her sight due to the terrible malnourishment that she suffered, but she enriched the quality of life no end in our family. She simply spread joy all around her. She loved music, singing and praying. She simply lived for the Liturgy and the Rosary. She was blessed with a superb sense of memory and would recall the numbers of hymns to be sung, and would recall with exactitude what books they were in, the Old Books and the New Books. She helped us realise the great potential that music has in providing therapy. She brought home to us that music is an essential means of communication and interaction between all the residents and that group music experiences creates bonding and a sense of community among our residents and assistants. This is something we would love to develop more in the new wing of the home that we hope shortly to build.

Maria Yoli died rather suddenly on the 8^th July last. The State-run hospital was not very helpful. It was heartbreaking (but so common here) that they had no sense of urgency in attending poor Maria Yoli. We all miss her. Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann.

We remember Maria Yoli as a most happy person who communicated a great sense of happiness to all around her every day of her life. Liturgy for Maria Yoli was truly a celebration. She put her entire heart and soul into it. Adapting words from Psalm 41, we can say:

“These things will we remember

How Maria Yoli would lead the rejoicing crowd

Into the House of God

Amid cries of gladness and thanksgiving

The throng wild with joy.” (cf Psalm 41:5)

Maria Yoli´s voice may not blend in perfect harmony with the choirs of angels in heaven, but she will rival them in volume and enthusiasm as with them she proclaims God’s glory and joins in the unending hymn of praise.

Tsunami

The last Christmas gathering of the Divine Word Missionaries here was overshadowed by the terrible tragedy of the tsunami. A number of my SVD brother priests come from Indonesia and East Timor. They were cut off from their loved ones and so their suspense was terrible as they wondered what had happened to their nearest and dearest. We all prayed together. It was incredible to believe that the tsunami had laid waste to thousands of miles of the Indian Ocean coastline. Our SVD congregation with other religious congregations have played an important role in the relief effort in all the stricken countries. Our congregation put their local knowledge and expertise to good use in this major disaster. In India and Indonesia our combined congregations of priests, brothers, sisters and lay people distributed much needed supplies including rice, sheets, saris, towels, utensils and kerosene.

Our Superior General, Fr Antonio Pernia SVD, visited Banda Aceh in Indonesia, a region which received the full blast of the tsunami. He was asked to say something about the Resurrection. It was a most difficult challenge for him to preach about the Resurrection to a people who had just experienced death and destruction on a massive scale. What to say about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead to someone who has lost a brother, a son, a sister, a daughter, parents or relatives in one of the most devastating natural catastrophes in recent times? In the end he chose the words “I am the Resurrection. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (JN 11: 25-26). While he was there one man stood on a bare site that used to be his home. The man believed that he’d lost everything and everyone. Moments later a young man came by on a motorbike. It turned out to be a family member. On seeing each other both men embraced and cried with joy. Fr Pernia returned from Banda Aceh impressed by the resilience of the people and their capacity to start life anew.

Visitors, Volunteers and TG4

We were honoured by the visit of the Irish Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr Michael McDowell to our homes on 18^th March last. The Minister was accompanied by his wife Niamh Brennan, the Irish Ambassador to Argentina Mr Keith Thompson, his wife Soledad, and other members of their delegation. Later on in the year Maria Kenneally, Mary Hoolahan and Aidin O´Sullivan from the Institute of Technology in Blanchardstown, as well as Ciara Davin, Huw Taylor and the O’Shaughnessy family from Mullingar, Ireland,  Brian, Ann, Deirdre and Patricia were cherished guests among us.

Again in the past year superb English and Irish volunteers as well as Ruben Weiringer, our first Austrian volunteer from the magical village of Oberndorf (see above), came to help us at various stages. May God bless abundantly Joanne O’Sullivan, Rupal Karia, Tejal Shan, Frances Marriet, Isabel MacMillan-Scott and Ruben. All those wonderful people through their individual talents, skills and generosity brought a great sense of purpose to all our lives. They found the time spent with us a vital antidote to materialism. All had in common a desire to search for a deeper meaning in life and a wish to narrow the terrible unjust gap between the first and third world. Their time with us helped them reflect on how lucky they are to have so much and they felt that the best way to thank God for this was to share so that others may escape from abject poverty. All came with a deep respect for the dignity and life of the people here.

London Event

I want to pay a special thanks to Kerry Keegan, the Secretary of our UK charity, her husband Brian, Frances Marriet and Isabel MacMillan-Scott for all their Trojan efforts in organising a fundraising event for us in London. The venue was Tavistock Square, where three weeks before a double decker bus was blown up in the London bombings. As you can imagine this added untold strain and worry to the event organisers. They decided to go ahead and thank God the night was a success. I would also like to thank Tom Duffy from Mullingar who flew over at this vital time to give support and encouragement to the event.

TG4

The Irish language television channel TG4 came last December and did a feature on the homes. This was broadcast on Good Friday last and subsequently shown on two other TV channels. I would like to thank all the crew from TG4 who did us a great service by bringing the work of the homes to a wide audience.

Wedding Bells

“It’s love that makes the world go round,” the song says. Una McAnulty, one of our Irish volunteers, met Ernestor Silclir, one of our assistants from the locality, here in Oberá. They fell in love and were married last February. Ernestor and Una have a great sense of vocation to help people with disabilities find their potential and live as active a life as possible. The happy couple is now living in Ireland. Ernestor made an enormous contribution to our homes over a number of years, and worked for a long time without pay in the very early days when we had next to nothing. All of us wish Una and Ernestor many years of love and happiness. May God shower his innumerable blessings upon them.

Achievements

As some of you may already know, we are a registered charity in the UK (charity number: ). At the moment we are working on a similar arrangement for Ireland. This is important for our fundraising efforts in Ireland because donors can avail of tax relief when giving to recognised charities.

A reminder of our account details:

British Account

Account Name:          St Teresa Orphan Foundation

Account No.:              16297253

Sort Code:                  60-15-07

Address:                     National Westminster Bank

30 Market Place

Newbury

Berkshire RG 14 5AG

England

Irish Account

Account Name:          St Teresa’s Oberà Support Fund

Account No.:              05707052

Sort Code:                  93-42-75

Address:                     Allied Irish Bank,

                                     The Quay,

                                      Waterford,

                                      Ireland.

Charity  No.  CHY 17476.

IBAN: IE 86AIBK93427505707052..

BIC: BICAIBKIE2D

Our web site has recently been updated to include several new items and sections of interest. I would encourage you to have a look at our site to keep abreast of ongoing work in our Homes – www.rescueargentina.com 

Future Projects

We hope to extend St Teresa’s Home. We want to develop and improve our existing services and to ensure the continued loving and devoted care and attention to our new and existing family members. We hope to expand an existing room in St Teresa’s Home to provide music therapy and to develop specialised areas for intellectually and physically disabled residents.

We also plan to build a chapel here beside St. Teresa’s Home. The building and opening of this chapel will provide a spiritual and healing focal point. Our homes will be given a heart, a centre of life. When the chapel is completed God will dwell in a special way among all of us and give us new life. A chapel in our context is an essential place of healing, rehabilitation and reconciliation.

On the 16^th September, Fr Alberto Klein SVD, the Provincial Superior of the Divine Word Missionary Congregation, led a ecumenical blessing of the site of our future Bible Garden. The garden has a very important place in scripture. In this sub-tropical region almost all the plants and trees mentioned in the Bible grow naturally, so we hope to proclaim the Word of God in this way, and provide a beautiful place of reflection and contemplation for our visitors and residents alike.

Gracias

As the curtain comes down on another year I thank each and everyone for helping us. Without you this work would not be taking place. You are part of our daily prayer. I hope that the peace and joy so wonderfully expressed in the Song from Heaven visits all your homes at this time.

Guím ráth Dé oraibh ar fad, a cháirde ó chian agus ó chóngar. Faoi bhrat Mhuire sibh i gcónaí. Nollaig shona daoibh go léir.

Liam Ó hAodha, SVD