Preparing a humanitarian aid container for the Mission in Madagascar
This year, the solidarity campaign also began, in which many people wanted to participate and thus provide aid to our Malagasy brothers and sisters. Preparing a humanitarian aid container was not easy: donors were found, medicines, medical supplies, hospital equipment (including four dialysis machines), food, solar panels, and electrical equipment were collected. All of this required commitment, patience, and a network of volunteers willing to sacrifice their time.
The result was extraordinary, and on June 2nd the container departed for Madagascar, where it will arrive at the end of July. It’s wonderful to imagine the surprise and joy on the faces of adults and children when the collected materials are distributed to them.
The symbolic embrace that reaches the mission from Italy includes all those who have made this initiative possible. By helping others, one feels better, more useful, more alive: this activity responds to something within each of us, and caring for others is a balm for the soul.
Fr. Gennaro Sorrentino,
Provincial Superior of Europe South
The Redemptionists in Madagascar
The Redemptorists of the Neapolitan Province, invited by Archbishop J. Wolff of Diego Suárez, left Rome on October 15, 1967, via Brussels and Athens, and on October 17, 1967, landed for the first time in Madagascar. The first missionaries were Fathers Luigi Pentangelo and Vincenzo Sparavigna.
The new Archbishop, Bishop Tsiahahoana, entrusted our missionaries not only with the new area of the city (Tanambao), but also with some rural villages such as Anamakia and Antongombato.
Between 1969 and 1974, the Mother Province sent other confreres, and there were already four missions in northern Madagascar. For various reasons, three houses were gradually closed (Tanambao in 1975, Ambilobe in 1980, Ampanefena in 1989), and the few remaining Redemptorists formed a single community in Vohemar. Desiring to provide a better future for the growing number of young people, the Province committed itself by sending two priests in 1989 to build a seminary, the “Foyer St. Alphonse,” in the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo. The seminary was inaugurated on August 1, 1992. Formation was led by Father Vincenzo Martone, who arrived in Madagascar on December 16, 1974. In 1994, the first Malagasy priest, Father Pascal Tsimanarisoa, was ordained in Vohemar. After him, other ordinations contributed to increasing the Redemptorists’ presence in the mission.
(Source: redentoristinapoletani.it)
