Belem Mission history starts on the first October 2005, when Cardinal Hummes blessed our mission. We were few people, without any money. God realized through us the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Nowadays we welcome more than 900 people, who used to live on the road, under a bridge, slaves of various vices, babies two mouths old and old people 99 years old. They are welcomed into our 77 homes, spread in 10 dioceses. All of them are walking till the complete interior recovery of themselves.
7000 road brothers lived in our homes and few of them returned back to their past life. In the last Mission in July 2009, about 100 missionaries lived a complete week on the road, day and night, without any break. Not more than 150 brothers, who lived with us, returned back to their past life.
Maybe just the 3% of them gave in to the temptation to return to their past habit. Almost all of them asked us for another opportunity to recover and we accepted the promise with infinite pleasure.
Our centre is situated in the Belem Region in the archdiocese of San Paolo where Father Giampietro is considered the diocesan priest. The bishops who are supporting Belem Mission are Mons. Pedro Luis Stringhini (the auxiliary bishop) and the Cardinal Mons. Odilo Scherer.
It’s about the miracle of the evangelization of the tramps or “road people”: they are about 200 ex- drunkards, drug addicts, homosexuals, prostitutes, ex-prisoners, drug traffickers and killers, coming from the hell and transformed into Christ disciples and missionaries. They sustain the helping houses forming the unbelievable Jesus arm. They came from the hell underground formed by the men without God.
55 young people chose to devote themselves to God, living on the roads and into the favelas.
In Brazil and in Italy, more than 4500 people live according to God Words (Spiritual Diary), meditating and living them every single day of their life and considering the poor people as the core of their own life.
Every day we notice the miracle worked by God. Our therapy is a sort of “Christ-therapy”. We are not a hospital, but we are a “Prayer House”. We don’t use medicines. The road vices are treated with the ancient Benedictine method: Ora et labora.
Our life and our evangelization could be synthesized with these words: shipwrecked who saves another shipwrecked”. We are all so weak and hurt that only Jesus is able to realize in us the miracle of salvation. We are all witnesses of this. “We posses this treasure in a clay pot, in order that this extraordinary power is clear being come by God and not by men” (2 Cor 4,7-15). Looking at each other, we don’t have any strength to stand by ourselves, can you imagine to fight?
The large God power shows his mercy using each man: just as a broken clay pot. While God heals us He asks us for healing our brothers, He asks us for helping our brothers. God creates a “saint chain of aid” with us, “from hell to heaven”. Our houses welcome the poorest people in the world for free. They are not for us “convalescing patients”, but they are for us “brothers who are looking for something better than their real and actual life”. They are walking to find God.
Only God knows the quantity of love which is hidden into these brothers’ hearts. Some of us, (thanks to Mons. Pedro Luis blessing, the auxiliary bishopo of San Paolo who helps us and come near us as if he is our father), chose to live completely on the road, day and night, sleeping with the road brothers, fighting to find a place where to have a shower, walking just with a plastic bin bag on their shoulders and the Belem mission Bag, with their Bible and the Spiritual Diary.
They live completely without any money just as sons of God and of the Saint Providence. This allows us to totally identify ourselves with the poor people, the sufferers and especially with the “Poor Christ” who is hidden into them. We feel that Saint Paul’s words begin to be real into us. “I’m crucified with Christ and I’m not alive any more, but Christ is living into me” (Gal 2,20).
Thanks to these brief words we can synthesize our charisma.
Belem
Belem Charisma,
unifies all the members
of this movement:
unmarried and married people, clergymen, anointed people and laymen.
It consists in living the Belem Miracle for a second time:
The strong and humble family Spirit
Which was between Mary, Joseph and Jesus.
Into the poor cave in Belem:
Image of the divine family of the Trinity,
Embodied among the poor people.
Like the poor people.
For the poor people.
Till a complete and total
Identification with them all.
For Italy:
Associazione Missione Belém ONLUS
Stocco Rosa – Vicolo Stati Uniti, 5
30030 Sandon di Fossò – VE
tel 041/466817 – email: info@missionebelem.it
For Brazil:
Av. Vicente Catalani, 1467 – Jd. Das Nações
13256-700 ITATIBA – São Paulo BRASIL
Tel. (005511) 4594-1530
