The Many Faces of Poverty

When we widen our horizon, we realize that poverty has many faces. It is much more than low income. it also reflects poor health and education, deprivation in knowledge and communication, inability to exercise human and political rights and the absence of dignity, self-confidence, self-respect and security.

There is the impoverishment of entire nations, poverty that destroys the identity of the local cultures and religions where essentially everyone lives in poverty. And, there is also environmental impoverishment. Behind these faces of poverty lies the grim reality of desperate lives without choices and often, governments that lack the capacity to cope.

In this wounded world the Comboni Missionaries are called to search for concrete answers and to reach out to all men and women without distinction, striving to build with them a civilization of love, founded upon the universal values of peace, justice, solidarity and freedom and on the integrity of creation. We want to deepen our awareness of the causes and consequences of the current problems and foster among ourselves a new way of thinking and acting. To achieve this we need to be nourished by the Word of God and motivated by the Comboni charism.

The Lord is determined to set oppressed people free and end the suffering of this world. But he needs people who are willing to give their talents and gifts to discover new ways through which he then will accomplish his dream. God has created us for a specific service which he has not given to any other. The privilege of being a missionary consists in having been called to share in a special way in the mission of Christ for a life giving transformation of the world into God's final design. In the Comboni missionary family, we have a good tradition of this struggle to transform the many faces of poverty.