Domund: Bishop warns against Eurocentrism: In Africa churches fill up

The Bishop of Bangassou (Central African Republic), Bishop Jesús Aguirre, a Comboni missionary, has warned against Eurocentric pessimism in the Church and has encouraged contemplation of the flourishing of the Catholic Church in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

This is what Bishop Aguirre stated during the opening speech of the World Mission Sunday (Domund) campaign in Spain: “I invite you to think about the universal Church, whose central axis today is already leaving Europe, and in many other countries where the faith of the Catholic Church is growing unstoppably.”

Thus, the prelate emphasizes that the appeal that “all the countries of the northern half of Europe are now mission lands” because vocations are diluted and age, “is not a lie, but it is not the whole truth either,” because some think only in the Church in the Old Continent.

In his opinion, these people are “short-sighted” because “the Catholic Church is universal and on the African continent and other continents the churches are full, if you don’t arrive at Mass time you stay standing, the young people organize everything.” liturgy and the parishes are full of groups.”

Bishop Aguirre arrived at the age of 28 in the Central African Republic, on a mission “in the middle of the jungle, 7 days by car from the first telephone” and is still there 44 years later. But he rejects overly admiring views of missionary work: “We are not heroes! Without the grace of God that sustains us, we would plummet,” he noted.

However, he has explained, regarding the work of those who go to mission lands, that “we believe in them because they go for life, they provide reliability with their projects on a humanitarian level, they found Churches focused on the Eucharist and adoration, “They give hope, they give an image of the Church that is alive and new.”

These foundations “have flourished, there are thousands of local priests in mission lands, seminarians, men and women religious, bishops and cardinals, who are not European and who are much more numerous than Western bishops and cardinals.”

Thousands of people have also come out of these churches to respond to the vocation to the mission. to the nations: “I am talking to you about at least 70,000 missionaries” from Africa, Asia and Latin America, he stated before stating: “And the number will continue to grow, although in Spain it continues to decline.”

Bishop Aguirre exhorted the European faithful who contribute to the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) to carry out their work with words of encouragement: “You are our rearguard, we are in the vanguard of the Church. “You cannot fall into discouragement or a kind of collective depression when we think that millions of Spaniards no longer practice and come closer to God only when Holy Week arrives.”

“Jesus had many occasions to become discouraged, but he always found encouragement in his Father and in the faith of the small and vulnerable. The Pontifical Mission Societies are the thermometer of faith in the world. This faith is hibernating or waning in some churches, but growing in others, because the Church is the Lord’s and he will make it flourish wherever he wants,” he concluded.