Despite losing 13 PIME priests and a bishop to COVID-19, missionaries around the globe refuse to abandon the poor communities they serve

DETROIT — Fr. Ace Valdez was walking to the Metropolitan Cathedral of Sao Paulo in Brazil on a Sunday afternoon.

He had headphones plugged in, listening to music and not wearing his clerics when a young man approached him with a demand: “Give me your phone.”

Fr. Valdez, a Filipino PIME missionary who serves at Our Lady of the Angels Parish on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, guessed the young man wasn’t armed, so he calmly asked why he was doing this.

The young man wanted to sell Fr. Valdez’s phone for food, so the priest, after casually telling the would-be robber he was a priest, offered to buy him a sandwich.

“He said, ‘Are you really a priest? Will God forgive me?’” Fr. Valdez told Detroit Catholic. “I said, ‘Of course, but please don’t do this anymore. You’re young, you have so much going on for you.’ He said his family has already rejected him, so I listened to him. Before parting ways, he embraced me, so I embraced him again, while I’m wearing a mask. But that physical contact, embracing one another spontaneously, for me that’s an unforgettable experience.”

That spontaneous human connection has been in short supply as the world is coming out of the grips of a COVID-19 pandemic that has put a halt to most person-to-person activity. But for the PIME missionaries — the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions — halting missionary evangelization was never an option.

So the nature of evangelization changed for the PIMEs, who are stationed in 22 countries around the world. The missionaries livestreamed Masses in parishes, donned gloves and masks while distributing food and making house visits, and living in solidarity with the world’s poorest.

“When it comes to evangelization, people here are very observant,” said Fr. Valdez, who throughout the pandemic took proper precautions but still ministered in person at the Sao Paulo favelas that make up his parish’s territory. “When they see the sincerity of the priest, when know you are really into the pastoral work, that is what they identify. You don’t want to contaminate others, but we can’t just stay in our offices. So whether it’s celebrating Mass or walking the streets, we can be safe, we can keep our distance, but we’re still called to be missionary.”

Laying down one’s life

Fr. Valdez and other PIME priests and missionaries around the world have taken the COVID-19 restrictions, along with other obstacles such as government coup d’états, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and levels of poverty that are unthinkable in America, in stride.

Back at PIME’s North American headquarters in Detroit, Fr. Daniele Criscione, director of the PIME Mission Center, details the adjustments both missionaries abroad and the support staff in Detroit have had to make to continue the mission.

“We share the same painful experiences of many families,” Fr. Criscione told Detroit Catholic. “We lost 13 PIME fathers to COVID and one bishop. They were serving in very poor countries, with poor health care systems. Dom Pedro (Zilli), he was the PIME bishop of Guinea Bissau, a very rural poor diocese we founded, died after one week in the hospital, because it’s difficult to get oxygen.

“This shows you, our charism is to share the life, the fate of the people,” Fr. Criscione said. “Dom Pedro was a great man, a great priest, a wonderful bishop. I remember watching his funeral livestreamed, and thanks be to God for that, where his priests were carrying his casket. And that showed everyone, right there, that we are there to support the mission. We are there to be with the people.”

Much like the rest of the world, the people working at PIME’s central offices on Quigley Street in northwest Detroit have been working from home. In-person meetings have been swapped with Zoom meetings, as PIME staffers maintain contact with its network of supporters who fuel the mission.

Beyond raising monetary support for the missions, Fr. Criscione and his team continue to pray and offer community support to the PIME missionaries around the world — they just had to find new ways to do it.

“Even though we got so many limitations due to the restrictions we faced this year, I still believe as PIME, as an institute, we got to know ourselves and each other better,” Fr. Criscione said. “We have been like everyone else, limiting our in-person interactions. So we had to rethink our mission work everywhere. 

“In a certain sense, the pandemic has brought us together more than we were because we found ourselves physically working form home, and thanks be to God, we had the new technologies which allowed us to get together easily,” he added.

The mission evolves

Despite working remotely, the PIME support team reached out to its family of donors and raised $486,000 for projects in in 10 different countries through a virtual “Taste of Italy” event in March.

The group also used online platforms for a virtual Stations of the Cross event featuring 14 different locations around the world where PIME is located, creating a true global community centered around the institute.

“Our family is now bigger than before,” Fr. Criscione said. “When you work from home, you can really include other people who are working on Zoom meetings or other platforms. Our mindset was different than before the pandemic. It’s easier to start a project with people from Brazil, Mexico and elsewhere, working together to include those in the field, getting them involved with our work in Detroit. It’s a different way of looking at our own mission.”

The more direct connection between the PIME offices in Detroit helps those in the field feel supported and bounce ideas in dealing with the various restrictions around the world.

Fr. Valdez said the first challenge he faced was helping parishioners cope when the Diocese of Santo Maroro, a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, decided to suspend public Masses and encourage social distancing in a culture that puts a premium on large gatherings and closeness.

“Fear was the first challenge we had here,” Fr. Valdez said. “When the church here in Brazil decided, wisely, to close its doors to prevent the spread of the virus, some were unhappy about it. But I think our first challenge was maintaining contact with the people. Brazilians like to mingle with each other, they like to embrace, they are so spontaneous. So by closing the church premises, it’s quite hard because especially on the peripheries of big cities, churches are privileged places where they can gather together.”

With parishes seen as an all-important “third space” — an area besides a person’s home or place of work where they can socialize — it was incumbent upon missionaries to go to where the people were — their homes, their places of work — even if that meant putting themselves at risk.

“When people see their shepherd is with them, who sacrifices themselves every day, who celebrates the Eucharist with them, risking our lives, they see hope,” Fr. Valdez said. “It’s a strong message for them that the church is with them. When the church is with them, Christ is with them. We can do hundreds of online Masses, but when it comes to really reaching out to people, the personal encounter will never be substituted.

“Here in Brazil, that means being wise, taking precautions, but being in solidarity with health professionals who risk their lives every day,” Fr. Valdez added. “The vaccines are out — albeit slowly — but we have to have the courage to still go out, reach out, but also being prudent of not contaminating the other.”

Sacrificing as Jesus did

Fr. Criscione said PIMEs around the world have been worried about contracting COVID-19, noting the deaths of 13 members of the institute.

But COVID-19 is just one of many challenges, along with other diseases, poverty, terrorist attacks from Boko Haram in Nigeria and a government coup in Myanmar. But amidst all the challenges, missionaries are still called to share Christ, just as the people they minster to share Christ, despite all they live through.

“No matter where we serve, even the poorest of the people will come to us, giving something,” Fr. Criscione said. “Even in these times, there is still care, there still people out giving what little they have. You can still give something, and nobody is that out of reach to receive something.

“And the people will see, the ones we serve, they love us and they give to us, because they are our friends,” Fr. Criscione added. “They are friends, sent by God, just as we are sent by God to wherever we serve. The people of God remind us that God doesn’t leave us. 

“We (missionaries) are not heroes; we are children of God, serving children of God,” Fr. Criscione said. “It is God who acts. He is acting through the people we receive. He tells us, ‘You are loved. You are my child. You are not abandoned.’ No matter where people are, no matter what they are going through, we as missionaries witness God is here, here with us. And through COVID-19, He has shown He’s definitely with us.”

Support PIME

To learn more about the PIME Missionaries, or to lend your support to their worldwide missions in more than 18 countries around the world, visit pimeusa.org.