Man’s Plan and God’s Plan

The happy event of the canonization of Daniele Comboni during the General Chapter of the Comboni Missionaries stimulates me to reflect on the meaning of such an event for us and for the world. This event was greatly favored by the miracle worked by Comboni to accelerate the process and also to give the historical dimension of his charism. For he, answering the prayers of the Comboni Sisters in Khartoum and of Muslim relatives, performed the miracle of the astonishing and exceptional healing of Lubna Abdel Aziz, a Muslim and the mother of five children. This miracle is in keeping with Comboni’s style while he was alive. His prodigious deeds were recounted even then, like the healing of an epileptic Muslim girl and the welling forth of water in the desert before the astonished eyes of camel drivers who were dying of thirst. Thus, it is no surprise that Muslims, too, venerated the Bishop of the Sudan as a man of God, and that the governor, Rauf Pasha, wrote to him, “The Sudan was afflicted by a terrible drought, and I have no doubt that your prayers obtained the beneficent rain of heaven pouring down on this country.”

Strategy for Africa

In his “Plan for the Regeneration of Africa by Africa,” Comboni presented a strategy that engaged the Church and her institutions in establishing a number of educational centers all around Africa that were totally catholic, i.e., global in form and spirit. These establishments are places where the European does not succumb and the African is not alienated and made unfit for mission. In accordance with his Plan, Comboni founded the two Comboni Institutes in Verona, one for men that includes priests and laymen, and one for women, and then the two institutes in Cairo for African children.

The Plan’s strategy had as a result the fact that for five years none of Comboni’s missionaries died, but this strategy was soon abandoned, and Comboni moved with his missionaries from Egypt towards the Sudan, aspiring more and more to go up the Nile to Uganda. Various missionary stations were established along the Nile Valley as far as Holy Cross and Gondokoro. For Egypt is the gateway to Africa by way of the Nile Valley. Turkey, on which the Khedive of Egypt depended, pushed its troops farther and farther into the heart of Africa, followed by merchants and explorers. This conquest by Egypt extends the Muslim presence all the way to the heart of Africa, as is the case particularly of the West Nile, the current Diocese of Arua. Since then, up to our own day, a plan exists, more or less consciously shared by all the Islamic countries, for conquest through the Nile Valley, to the point of connecting across Uganda and Tanzania with the Islamic coastal areas of Tanzania. This great project also explains the current conflicts in the south of the Sudan and north Uganda. Within this situation of countries that are now Islamic or destined–according to this plan–to become Islamic, we find the historic miracle of the Combonian presence, both of Comboni himself and of his missionaries, and above all of his Black people, who have become a poor and persecuted but lively and present Church. Comboni’s first concern was the regeneration of Black Africa by having the Blacks come together as a Church. At the same time, he had a great attention and love for the country where he was and for its prevalently Muslim inhabitants. This is why he entered into dialogue with everyone, governors and pashas. This Combonian presence, in Combonian style, expanded and bore fruit in an astounding way, in the midst of hardship and persecution, but always picking up again, by a continuing miracle that is before everyone’s eyes even today. This work of Comboni’s is carried forward above all by the Africans themselves. They are the ones who, emigrating to north Sudan and Egypt, fill these countries with a poor and marvelous Church presence.

John Paul II chose to indicate this fact when he made the Archbishop of Khartoum, Gabriel Wako Zubeir, a Cardinal. The Pope was certainly struck when, during his visit to Khartoum, he found himself in the presence of an immense Christian people in an Islamic land, and saw also the Muslims’ admiration for this great presence. By making Zubeir Cardinal, he recognized in him the more significant figure of Comboni, whom he declared saint on October 5, 2003. I personally taught Msgr Zubeir philosophy and Arabic, and at the time I remember that a Madi priest, Fr Avellino, said with regard to Khartoum’s plan to make all of the Sudan Islamic, “We will be the ones to invade the whole north and make the Church present everywhere.” At that time (1960), the missions in the north were still very tiny, containing a few Syrians or other foreigners and a small core of Africans, but now everything has changed, in the direction indicated by Fr Avellino, and visitors to Khartoum today are struck by the liveliness of the African Church there.

Comboni is rightly considered a father of Black Africa by great sons like Gabriel Wako Zubeir, but it seems important to me to note also that Comboni is a son of Black Africa. For because of his intense love for Black Africa and his total obedience to God’s plan for Black Africa, he grew in intelligence, freedom, capacity for missionary work, and holiness. Without Black Africa, Comboni would never have been a saint or have been canonized.