The meetings promoted by the ALOE missionary association continue with men and women missionaries originating from our territories and operating in the many Souths of the world in the sign of international fraternity and solidarity.
After the February meeting with Father Giacomo Gobbi, a Xaverian missionary, to recall the great figure of Lucidio Ceci di Montegiorgio who died in Bangladesh ten years ago after over 50 years dedicated to the education of the tribal populations of that country; and after the meeting at the beginning of April with Father Mario Bartolini, originally from Roccafluvione and working for over 46 years in the Peruvian Amazon forest at the service of indigenous and rural communities, Tuesday 23 Aprilat 9.00 pm at the community room of the House of Associations in Via Del Bastione 3 in Fermo, it was the turn of Ermelinda Sergolini, originally from Mogliano (MC) and has been a missionary in Latin America for many years now.
Ermelinda is a consecrated lay person belonging to the congregation of the “Missionaries of the Immaculate – Father Kolbe”, a congregation linked both to the Conventual Franciscans and to Poland, the land of origin of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the founder. Raised in Mogliano and active as a girl in the parish of the Conventual Friars Minor, Ermelinda soon felt the missionary call also because she was the granddaughter of another missionary of our diocese, Father Giuseppe Verdicchio who lived all his life in Zambia, his chosen land and mission where he worked for almost 60 years until the Lord called him to himself on 17 December 2018.
Ermelinda began her missionary experience in Bolivia in 1991, in the Cochabamba mission. From 1998 she worked in Argentina until 2009, the year in which she returned to Bolivia, where she is still today in the community of Montero, in the eastern part of the country. A missionary activity that starts from a pastoral discourse, aimed at the human and Christian formation of the very poor population, and reaches by force of circumstances, but above all out of evangelical need, to a social activity with initiatives aimed at helping the poorest people and families to regarding the problem of food, health, school, housing and anything else needed to give a minimum of dignity to their extremely precarious life. Ermelinda and her sisters from the community of the Missionaries of the Immaculate – an international community with origins from various European and Latin American countries – therefore live their mission deeply immersed in the popular reality of the suburbs ( the barrios), in contact with families made up of 15/20 people who live crowded together in huts made of wood and mostly consist of a single room, which forces children and adults to live perpetually on the street and in absolute promiscuity. What makes the situation even worse is the increasingly overwhelming power of corruption at all levels and especially now also of drug trafficking. The Church still continues to maintain a role in denouncing poverty and corruption in the country, but lately it seems more tired and resigned.
The Aloe association connected with Ermelinda almost immediately when she was still in Argentina, because she was one of the first missionaries to respond to our connecting letters, letting us know about her missionary reality. Contact then continued from Bolivia, although not with continuity. Every now and then some small project she presented to us was also supported, such as that of the “soup kitchen” in Olovarria in Argentina and other micro projects in Bolivia in Montero where she lives now. For the future, Ermelinda said she was available to welcome people who wanted to share the missionary life of her community for some time; a proposal much appreciated by ALOE, also because the association, which has found itself sending many young people on missions in the past, would be truly happy to be able to resume these experiences. A meeting that could therefore also constitute a new beginning. We’ll see.
Even though it was a Tuesday evening, the meeting attracted considerable interest both in terms of the number of participants and the interventions following the presentation of her experience by the missionary. The meeting also attracted the presence of people who have spent a few years volunteering with other organizations in Bolivia or who have known volunteers who have had this experience. A Zoom connection was also made with Poland where a friend of ours who is also interested in Ermelinda’s mission, Giordano Mancineli from Francavilla d’Ete, lives. A truly international meeting in every sense therefore.
At the end of the meeting, a large monetary donation was made to the missionary, collected for the occasion and intended for the construction of some public toilets for homes near the mission or for other small projects that she deems appropriate. Finally, the missionary thanked our association for being one of the very few entities in our territory and in our diocese truly interested in her mission in Bolivia, which contributes to making her still feel part of our local community despite over thirty years in Latin America.
