Cristian Camargo was born in Mar del Plata (Argentina) and from an early age he had a dream: to be a cartoonist. The firm monitoring of that dream, the teaching of their parents about the importance of faith in community and the call of Pope Francis to “play it” did the rest: today he travels through the world with an itinerant mission, and painted in Kenya his mural number 270.
“When you are small, they ask you what you want to be when you are big, and I always said that I wanted to be a cartoonist. I always liked drawing, painting, and that never changed. As a boy I went to workshops, and there was a time when I decided to be an artist, ”Cristian reviews from Nairobi (Kenya) where, brush in hand, he travels villages aboard the project” Murals for Peace “.
Receive the main news of ACI Press by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social networks. Subscribe to our free channels today:
Faith is walking together
Cristian is 33 years old and is a trillion brother, born in a family of Franciscan spirituality. Therefore, since childhood he was educated in “the idea of faith related to commitment to the other”, and the certainty that “faith is lived in a community way.”
“I always say that there are people who became seeing the Eucharist, or something more mystical. Mine was more everyday: my commitment was to find God in the community, in the familiar, and in being able to walk together. ”
“I started in the Church as a personal decision and not for any family imposition, and it was from that place of wanting to participate in the community, being in a peripheral neighborhood, to help the community from teamwork,” he says.
“I want to play it”
In 2013, Cristian was one of the privileged who was a few meters from Pope Francis when he spoke before millions of young people one of the most emblematic phrases of his pontificate: “Make mess … I want the church to go to the streets.”
At that time, Cristian recalls, he thought: “I agree with that and I want to play it” (in Argentina, risk).
Over the years, the Pope’s message “has been as a way of underpinning or also helping to clarify ideas, feelings, searches,” says the cartoonist. “I come from a Franciscan family, so I think that for more than one he has passed through many charisms, Francisco took that name and I remember that it arose to say: I have to pay attention to him, because he will talk about what one is looking for and where one chooses to go, and those ideas of the church in exit, work in Fratelli Tutti (brothers all) and in the community, I think that has helped me to reaffirm, to confirm, to confirm, to confirm, to confirm, to confirm, to confirm, to confirm, to confirm, to confirm, to confirm, holds.
For years, Cristian has been working with Pastoralales, Catholic movements and groups, and his stroke became an unmistakable seal of the Catholic community in Argentina, also conquering the digital continent. Today their drawings circulate between educational communities, catechists, organizations and parochial groups.
Make the “church on exit” come true: the itinerant mission
The desire for an itinerant mission arose in his heart about six years ago: “I already worked for years with the drawings, and I always had missionary concern, the idea of the church in exit, a little by the Pope, but also motivated by many personal experiences,” he recalls.
He began to sprout in him “this idea of making collective murals and being able to make my drawings, share it with people, thinking about the idea with people and painting them,” he reviews. “One day I finished going around and said: I’m going to do it. And this idea occurred to me to start by traveling. Then at first I thought about living traveling without having a home, living 100% itinerant, as now, ”he explains.
His tour began on the Argentine routes, where in 2019 he painted 29 murals in almost all the provinces of the country. In 2020 he was invited by a group of young people from the Consolata de Colombia to perform his first experience outside the country. At that time the project began to have another form, it began to look for a different name and methodology, which included an instance of dialogue to think about the community mural.
Murals for peace
“Murals for Peace” was born, a project located in the context of Colombia’s armed conflict, where Cristian worked with religious communities and organizations committed to the places most affected by violence.
The proposal to travel to Africa came from the hand of the missionaries of Yarumal, Colombia. But before leaving for Kenya, he had a stop where he was filled with breath for the mission: a visit to Rome, in which he starred in a brief encounter with Pope Francis.
“I came just to tell him that he was a itinerant missionary, who mission through the murals, that we worked for peace, for another possible world. He heard very attentive, and a nice gesture, when I told him that it was Argentine, he shake hands and said ‘Well, I continued out there, I pray for that’. It was a gift in the simplicity of the moment, ”he says.
The art, language that connects
Then he left for Kenya, a place that for him “was a challenge.” His great concern, he acknowledges, “was more than anything the language”, because despite the fact that in the main cities they speak English, the official language is the Swahili.
“It was a challenge but also, in doubts, one trusts that art is a universal language. The proposal of murals for peace is to be able to build something humanitarianly, and to be able to share a moment. ”
“You share, paint, there are times that you do not speak so much because there are many who are painting, but it is to spend the time and share, live the community experience of power, among all, do something universal.”
“I confirm that art is the architect of being able to demonstrate beauty and that is universal, create in what you believe, speak the language you speak, art is universal and is a language that connects us, that unites us, beauty, you could say the beauty of God’s creation, speak constantly and is universal,” says the missionary.
“I had heard a friend of a friend who says that one in Africa every day is happy. Well, I confirm it by sharing with people, with the simplicity of the children who see you and come to play, and whether or not you speak their language is the least, because they live in that simplicity of sharing, of living in their time. Here it is said a lot that one learns to live in the concrete, in the simple, in what one really needs, ”he details.
“When one is choosing the same options for the common good, it ends up understanding. And the truth is that coming to Africa was a gift, obviously he had his challenges, many, but for me it was a joy, ”he synthesizes.
In the coming months, Cristian will travel Colombia and return to his homeland to continue with this mission in motion that summons, unite, and paint the world with colors of fraternity.
Those who wish to know Cristian’s work can do so in Instagram, Facebook. To collaborate with your mission they can enter This link.
Julieta Villar
I am a journalist, a graduate in Communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non -governmental organizations. Since 2016 I dedicate myself to Catholic journalism, first in the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as a correspondent for ACI Press for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.