WARREN — The completion of a refugee settlement and a new Catholic parish in Cameroon. The funding of medical dispensaries in India. Clean water and electricity for a girls’ hostel and the renovation of boarding homes in Myanmar. Ongoing support for leprosy patients in Bangladesh.
Such projects represent just a sliver of the charity and works of mercy performed by PIME Missionaries around the globe.
The work of the pontifical mission institute, with its North American headquarters based in Detroit, was on display during a celebration and fundraiser Oct. 4 to highlight the foreign missions at Andiamo banquet hall in Warren.
The “Serata” event — an Italian word for “evening” — served both to promote the impact of the missions and to conclude a year of celebration for the institute, which was founded in Milan, Italy, in 1850. Today, the institute has more than 500 priests and brothers serving in 17 countries across the globe.
Bro. Marco Monti, PIME, gave the evening’s keynote address, relaying his experiences working with disabled children as a missionary in northern Thailand.
Serving in Phrae Province, Bro. Monti said less than 1 percent of the province’s population is Christian, with the vast majority professing a Buddhist faith.
“Even now, in 2018, Christianity and Jesus Christ are still unknown there,” Bro. Monti told the banquet hall of 400 people, which included Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, Auxiliary Bishop Robert Fisher and more than 70 priests and PIME brothers. “When we speak about statistics there, it’s about zero-point-something percent of the population. In Phrae, which is not a big province, if there are 170,000 people, Christians — not just Catholics — account for about 150 people.”
While the brothers always look for ways to share the Gospel, being a missionary isn’t just about converting people, Bro. Monti said.
The goal of the missionaries, rather, is to be a “witness of charity,” helping to provide for the material needs of a downtrodden population, so that they might then think about questions of ultimate importance, Bro. Monti said.
“We are there to be a sign for them,” Bro. Monti said. “(We want them to think), ‘Why is this man here doing these things, instead of doing many other things in Thailand? Why spend his life here?’ We are there to work with them in order to show that they have a great, great value because they are all sons and daughters of God.”
Bro. Monti also shared the story of Servant of God Bro. Felice Tantardini, PIME, whose cause for beatification has inspired the brothers around the globe to imitate the selfless life of a missionary.
Bro. Tantardini, an Italian who was born in 1898, spent 70 years working with the poor as a blacksmith in Myanmar (Burma) helping to build schools, churches and hospitals for lepers and orphans.
“He was not a giant; he was a very short man, very skinny, but he was famous for these words: ‘He used a hammer to work, and a rosary to pray,’” Bro. Monti said.
When his life was nearing its end, Bro. Tantardini’s bishop instructed him to write down his experiences in a diary, which he faithfully did, Bro. Monti said.
“He didn’t want to be a writer, but he wrote these things: ‘Even after death, once I reach heaven, where I hope to go, I will continue from up there to be a missionary,’” Bro. Monti said.
Fr. George Palliparambil, PIME, regional superior for the PIME Missionaries in Detroit, thanked those gathered for raising more than $85,000 for the missions, and Archbishop Vigneron also offered his thanks for the missionaries’ presence in Detroit.
The archbishop noted that like PIME, the Archdiocese of Detroit is called to be missionary in its own way, sharing the Gospel through words and service to the people of southeast Michigan.
“In these six counties there are a lot of people who don’t know the love of God in Jesus Christ. We need to share that love, and having the PIME Missionaries here is a wonderful example to us of the need for the whole Church to be missionary,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “The missionaries from PIME are some of the most vibrant and dedicated foreign missionaries, to the mission ad gentes, and we are proud that you live and work here in the archdiocese.”
