On February 22, Lourdes Perramón Bacardit, Superior General of Oblates, and Roberto Ferreiro, coordinator of the Oblate project of Ferrol, participated in the Justice and Mission 2025 Conference – THE NAMES OF HOPE TODAY, organized by CONFER (Spanish Conference of Religious).
At this meeting, Oblatas participated in a round table of experiences with the Bayt Al Thaqaf Foundation of Barcelona and the Seeds of Hope Project held at the La Salle Arlep Center in Madrid.
In his presentation, Roberto started from the reality experienced by women in prostitution who are supported by this resource, and then went on to comment on the good experience of the joint work he has been carrying out with Cáritas Diocesana Mondoñedo-Ferrol, enabling more comprehensive care and reaching out to various contexts. The intervention ended by pointing out aspects to take care of in order to allow the hope of a new life that exists within each woman to grow.
This conclusion gave rise to an interesting discussion with the people following the session.
Lourdes Perramón, vice-president of CONFER, closed the conference by briefly reviewing everything that had been experienced during the conference and the impression it had left on all the attendees, making them part of this closing with moments for silence and reflection. In her closing speech, Lourdes assured that “hope without names does not exist.”
I believe that hope without names does not exist, it is a fallacy. It is an empty theory that “falls,” vanishes in the face of so many situations of injustice that hurt us on a daily basis, in those closest to us, and unfortunately in the entire world.
…Religious life, due to the breadth and diversity of its presence, is a true watchtower that allows us to witness what is happening in our world… And it is from there that we have the certainty and the good fortune to be witnesses of hope made real, embodied in so many names, faces and concrete stories.
We also have within us another list of names. NAMES, secondly, of people who are sometimes judged to be deluded, because they continue to strive to build a better world.
People who, as we have been able to meet, sense or even hear in these days, make their lives a song of hope by not giving up in the face of such a feeling of helplessness. People who have a brave word of denunciation, a cordial gesture of welcome and closeness, a discreet but constant commitment to those who need it, and they do it without publicity, without seeking rewards. They do it simply because in each person there is a brother/sister with the same rights, even though society insists on trampling on them or considering them “second-class citizens” or even “non-citizens” because they come from other countries, have different capacities, different sexual identities or so many reasons that are subjected as an excuse to discriminate. (…)
And to put the finishing touch to this list of names, I believe that the sequence of the interventions during these days has led us, with full meaning and without failing, to the GREAT NAME: JESUS of NAZARETH. For those of us who are here, it is precisely from Him that all hope is born, nourished, and sustained.
…a hope that is perhaps fragile at times, because it passes through and is tested precisely in the journey through that fragility of the cross. But a hope that is brighter and more possible from there, because it does not depend on a human experience, strength or protagonism, but comes from God, sustained by faith and by the Risen Christ.
He IS OUR HOPE. He is faithful, He does not fail, He does not let us down, and He sustains hope… against all despair.
(hermanasoblastas.org)
