The Power of the Spirit in St. Comboni (2)

St. Comboni put his natural gifts at the disposal of the Spirit to communicate his missionary ideal and to involve everyone he met. His view was the widest the human heart could imagine: the whole world ~ to be given its human dignity through the mediation of the Church.

He wanted to involve believers in carrying out his Plan and he started with the Pope, met with Propaganda Fide and many Bishops ~ including an appeal for "the moral and financial support of the Catholics of the whole world". He didn't hold back from encounters with ordinary folks to those in leadership positions. When he met powerful people or was faced with the political matters of his time, his one concern was to plead the cause of the neglected people of Africa. Like other saints, he takes his place in history as a man with a single passion: for him, the re-birth of Africa when most were looking at Africa in terms of what could be exploited.

In the Message of the African Synod in a final appeal stated, "...the primary need in which our identity is, as it were, crushed in the jaws of a merciless history, is that prophets come forward to speak in the name of the God of hope, for creation of a new identity. Africa needs holy prophets".