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On the Island of Lilies

On mission in the middle land. The story of a newly ordained priest in the Fraternity of St Charles Borromeo, from his university experience to the foundation of the first house in Taipei. In a country where Catholics are only a small minority, the spread of a friendship that reaches men’s hearts

By PAOLO DESANDRÉ

I am a missionary in the Fraternity of St Charles and was ordained a priest on June 22nd, together with four of my brothers. Last September, I was sent, along with Paolo Cumin, to Taipei, capital of the island of Taiwan. At the end of the summer, we will return there definitively. Paolo Costa, who on June 22nd was ordained deacon with five other young men, will go with us.

Turin to Rome
The story of my vocation began twelve years ago when I left Saint-Oyen, a small town of barely 200 people in Valle d’Aosta, Italy, to go to Turin to attend the university’s Forestry School. As soon as I arrived at the university, I met some students belonging to the Movement who helped me with enrollment and advised me about courses to take.

It happened that during my university years, I read a letter written to Traces by Fr Paolo Pezzi, at the time a missionary in Siberia, and I intuited that the Lord was calling me to follow him into the Fraternity of St Charles. Thus, after I got my degree, I went to Rome and entered the seminary.

Thinking back over what has happened in these twelve years, I am amazed and moved. They have been nothing but a process of saying “Yes” to the suggestions God put into my life. I really believe that life is nothing other than trustfully letting oneself be put into the places where the good Lord wants us to be.

First fruits
When we arrived a year ago in Taipei, Icio and Isa came to meet us at the airport with their two children, Davide and Francesca. Icio and Isa are the real pioneers of our mission in this land. They lived in Taipei for seven years as Italian teachers at Catholic University, and they have sown what we are now seeing yield its first fruits.

The first of these fruits is the warm friendship with Bishop Ti-Kang. I can still remember his homily on the day Icio and Isa definitively returned to Italy. He wanted everyone present to know their story and the history of Fr Giussani and the whole Movement.

As soon as we arrived in Taipei, Paolo and I started studying Chinese, as guests of the Bishop. Every evening we would eat with him. Any time there were other guests, he would seize the occasion to briefly tell the history of the Movement. He tells everyone about the year he attended the Meeting in Rimini and how struck he was at seeing an event in which an entire people participated.

One of his main concerns regards Catholic University, which, he says, needs true witnesses to Christ. For this reason, he strongly desired that the Movement’s presence continue even after the departure of Icio and Isa. Thus, a married couple from Gubbio (Italy) came, Andrea and Cecilia, and then Valentina from Macerata.

We share with them all the steps we have to take, for our Lord is the one who brought us together and sent us here. Before we came to Taipei, we did not know each other at all, but now we are here together, more than 5,000 miles from our own land, in order to make known the One who saves our and everyone’s lives. What fascinates me most about Andrea and Cecilia is the boldness and joy with which they do everything, and the fact that they are completely entrusted to the Lord, without worrying about the outcome of their actions. They are always amazed at the small and great miracles that happen every day (which a person attached to a hoped-for result would never see). They often read to us the essays written by their students, some of which testify how the questions that young people have about life explode inside them without finding adequate answers. At the Tuesday raggio (youth meeting), questions arise that are very beautiful and concrete. This fact in itself is a small miracle, because Chinese kids normally ask very few questions and tend to keep everything inside them.

Xiao Bing
Everything that is taking shape is linked, as I said before, to the seeds planted by Icio and Isa. One seed that has already blossomed is a girl named Xiao Bing, whom we, for convenience’s sake, call Giovanna. In a letter she wrote “Yesterday evening I told Roberta (another Chinese girl who is very fond of us) about my encounter with Jesus through Isa and Icio. I saw that they were different from everybody else. They had something different, but I didn’t know what it was–for examples, the way they lived, the way they were with their friends…. So I told them that I wanted to understand what they had that was different, and for this reason, I wanted to become a Catholic.”

How many things there are to tell you! And so many friends to introduce to you: Vincenzo (Lin Huai Min), Loredana (Zhang Shi Tou), Simona (Shu Ting), Irene (Liou)…

Bao Bao and Mumu
The last one I cannot avoid telling you about is Bao Bao. A seminarian in Taipei, he is also a guest of Bishop Ti-Kang and was in a room near ours last year. One evening he told us his story: For years, he worked as a journalist for an important daily newspaper in Taiwan. One day, he went to a little island called Matzu, a few miles off the coast of the People’s Republic and a strategic point for the Taiwanese army. His assignment was to write an article about the young soldiers who lived on the island. Talking to and interviewing the soldiers, he came to know about “Mumu” (Mama), a religious sister who often went to see the soldiers, bringing them their favorite foods. Bao Bao, out of curiosity and a desire to taste Mumu’s cooking, went to see her. She must have made a great impression on him because he told us that meeting her was like touching God’s love for mankind with his own hands. He, a Buddhist, a year after meeting Sister Mumu began preparations to receive Baptism and now, at the Bishop’s suggestion, he wants to go to Italy to study Italian and to begin his studies of philosophy and theology in order to become a priest.

In the face of all the difficulties that come up, we can learn and be helped by those who have been there longer than we. This has given rise to a friendship with the Xaverian, Comboni, Camillian, and Salesian fathers. The charity projects we began this year, too, have led to our encounter with the Sisters of Mother Teresa, who are a vision of gratuitousness and gladness.

The Year of the Horse
The presence of Catholics in Taiwan is numerically very small, and in theory insignificant when compared to the number of people belonging to the other religions. We realized this toward the end of this year, during the festivities for the beginning of the Year of the Horse. We went to the temple of Confucius and then to the Taoist temple nearby. How many people! Almost all the Chinese, at the beginning of the year, rush to the temples to make the bai bai, a propitiatory prayer with which they ask the gods’ help.

At the end of July, then, we shall return to Taipei to continue our studies. With Paolo Costa, there will be three of us, and thus we shall begin a real house of the Fraternity of St Charles Borromeo in the Far East.

“You are in Taiwan on a mission,” Fr Massimo wrote us in one of his letters, “to know and love Christ more. What we must ask most from the Lord is the gift of unity, because the mission is the spreading of our friendship to the people whom the Lord places on our path.”