Fr. Don Vettese, SJ, with Calendar, a leader of the garbage dwellers in Panamá.

It is often said that the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways which we are unable to predict or sometimes to even understand. For Jesuit Father Don Vettese what should have been an impediment, a traffic accident, instead opened up the possibility of an even greater calling — to serve the poorest of the poor.

It was 1994 and Fr. Vettese was then president of St. John’s Jesuit High School in Toledo, Ohio.  One day, after his talk with the school’s senior class about the Christian calling to have a preferential option for service to the poor, the students approached Vettese with an idea.

“A few of the students came to my office to explain the difficulty of feeling compassion for the poor without experience,” says Vettese, “and they challenged me to help them educate their hearts.”

It was from that conversation Vettese planned a student service trip to an orphanage he’d founded a few years earlier in Guatemala City.

What Vettese did not know was that this trip would turn into something much greater. One morning, as Vettese and the students  were driving to the orphanage to work , there was a traffic jam resulting from a car accident. When their van was diverted from the main road  they suddenly found themselves in the Guatemala City garbage dump. Here they witnessed a sight that was almost unreal to them: a community of people living, quite literally, in garbage.

“The scene,” Vettese recalls, “was hell. There were acres of mounded garbage burning. There were hundreds of people milling around, looking for food and recyclables, while animals fed on the garbage. Vultures with eight-foot wing spans were swooping down for food and at the recyclers. We saw infants being stuffed into the trash and covered with cardboard to prevent the vultures from hurting them, and later discovered that their mothers felt the dangers from the vulture attacks were more serious than the rat bites that would occur from stuffing them into the garbage.”

Vettese’s talk about Christian leadership came back to the group full-force; that evening, he and the students reflected on the experience of the day, and the students wanted to know what could be done about the plight of the families they’d seen living in the dump. It was that fundamental question which led to the formation of International Samaritan.

Founded in 1995, International Samaritan works to develop livable communities for garbage dump dwellers.  The organization first partners with local governments and other non-profits to put basic infrastructure in place, and then begins addressing the vital needs of each community. The first priority in Guatemala was to build a nursery, so that babies and toddlers could be safe from the dangers of the dump. From there, the organization built schools, homes and community centers, and implemented a micro-loan program. In the years since 1995, International Samaritan has expanded its reach to communities in Egypt, Honduras, Haiti, El Salvador and Panama, and is currently conducting feasibility studies in Sierra-Leon and Ethiopia.

“Our business plan,” says Vettese, “is designed so that we plant the programmatic seeds with the goal of turning the projects over to qualified partners. The people we serve need everything, so we start any project that meets a basic need with partners who agree to sustain them. This frees us to tend to other projects in new locations.”

Many of the results of International Samaritan’s work, notes Vettese, can be difficult to quantify. “I cannot measure how much security a child feels when sleeping in a house with a bed as opposed to being covered by a cardboard box, and I cannot measure the peace of mind a parent feels when his or her child is able to spend the day in a safe and clean nursery as opposed to being stuck in the garbage, or attend school as opposed to working in the dump,” he says.

More concrete evidence of the value of International Samaritan’s work comes from a study administered by faculty at the University of Central America, which reported two key results from the organization’s projects in Guatemala City:

• International Samaritan’s structures and programs have brought stability to a neighborhood once described by the municipality as “transient” and unworthy of financial investment.
• The attitude toward education in the community is changing from little value for education (as reported by the government) prior to the development of International Samaritan institutions to a desire for more education.

Even more recently, the value of International Samaritan’s work has been recognized and lauded by the United Nations, which has granted the organization status as Special Consultants to the U.N. As a result of this new status, International Samaritan representatives will be granted passes to U.N. meetings and be able to participate at designated U.N. sessions. “In addition,” says Vettese, “this should grant us eligibility for certain United Nations Foundation and United States government grants, and greater opportunities for partnering on poverty relief programs.” Just as importantly, however, this new designation will, according to Vettese, “give voice to the people we serve living in the extreme poverty of garbage dump communities.”

Then, of course, there’s the other side of the coin: the value that International Samaritan volunteers get from participating in the organization’s service trips. “Again, these kinds of results can be difficult to measure,” says Vettese, “but we consider it our ‘other mission’—we are primarily servants of the poor, but we also serve the people who have their hearts touched by the communities they encounter on our immersion trips.”  It’s a mission the organization takes very seriously. “We seek to free them from as many logistics as possible so that they can focus on the experience.” To this end, the organization provides what Fr. Vettese calls “airport to airport” stewardship of trip participants. “All they have to do,” he says, “is get themselves to and from the airport. God has blessed us with resources and partnerships that allow us to take care of all of their other concerns so that they can get the most spiritual value possible out of the work they do with us.”

For Vettese, the work of International Samaritan is a daily reminder of God’s generosity. “The truth that came to me on that trip to Guatemala,” he recalls, “was that no one can do anything good without God. When the students initially asked me what we could do about what we saw that day, I said I did not know, and that we would have to wait and see if God would provide opportunities for service. I think He did.”

To find out more about International Samaritan and what you can do to help, visit www.intsamaritan.org, or call 734-222-0701.

For this year’s Teach In, Jesuit Father Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, provincial of the East African Province of the Society of Jesus, was the keynote speaker who discussed the issues facing his province today. During his time at the Teach In, National Jesuit News interviewed Fr. Orobator about the challenges that the Society of Jesus faces in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and the Republics of the Sudan in the North and South.

“I think the unique mission of the Society of Jesus is that we are able to think ‘outside of the box’.” I think that is very unique to Jesuits,” says Fr. Orobator. “We can work in parishes, we can run schools, we can run communications centers, we can run many different apostolates, but we can do it in a way that is unconventional.”

The theme of this year’s event was “The Gritty Reality: Feel It, Think It, Engage It,” derived from a speech given by former Jesuit Superior General, Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, in 2000 entitled, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education.” Kolvenbach said, “students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively.”

You can watch National Jesuit News’ interview with Fr. Orobator below.

With the assistance of a translator, Fr. Cardenal explained to a packed audience at Boston College that his time spent living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Colombian city informed his entire life’s work as a Jesuit and political leader in his native Nicaragua.

Among his neighbors was a family with seven children, whom Cardenal referred to as his “little bodyguards” because they were always following him around. One time, when he returned to his Jesuit residence, Cardenal walked in to find the children eating the Jesuits’ garbage. He described the emotional impact this moment had on him. Cardenal said, “That was a big hit for me. I loved them. You can’t imagine what that did for me.”

He continued, “Many times, the only thing these children had to eat was a roll made from corn and hot water with brown sugar added to it. My neighborhood was like a big lake, and we were all under the water of suffering. Often, I didn’t want to leave the house. The people were always suffering and without hope. When I walked down the street, I kept repeating to myself, ‘Unbearable. Unbearable. Unbearable.’”

Cardenal realized, “I cannot accept that people live this way. As a human being and as a Christian, I cannot accept it. It has to change.”

Upon returning to Nicaragua, the Jesuit continued to work for justice. His first assignment was as the vice-provost for students at the Nicaraguan Jesuit University, where his friend was the university’s president. “I had great admiration for him. He was charismatic and extraordinary,” Cardenal said.

However, on his third day at the job, a student movement erupted on campus because the president, Cardenal’sfriend, refused multiple requests from student leaders for a meeting. “The students requested three things,” he said. “First, they demanded a dialogue with the president. Second, they wanted a reform of the university’s regulations, which were put in place when the school was still very small. And third, they wanted to participate in the arenas and direction of the university.”

Much to his surprise, the students asked Cardenal to speak at their big rally in the school’s gymnasium. “At first, I didn’t want to speak, but I couldn’t say no,” he said. “I wondered, ‘What do I say?’ I worried about being a traitor to my friendship with the president. Eventually, I realized, no matter what, no matter what my superiors say, if I don’t say now what I was thinking, I would be a traitor to the oath I made in Medellin. I told them I heard their request, and I believed it to be just. I felt really emotional. I opened my heart to the students, and I said, ‘I support your position as long as you act without violence and act democratically.”

Later, while working at the national university in Nicaragua, Cardenal was approached by the student rebels fighting against the Somoza dictator. They wanted him to help their cause.

“I explained to Marcos, ‘The French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, and the Cuban Revolutions—all were done without, in spite of, and against Christians. I am a believer. I am a priest.’”

What brought Cardenal over to their side was that they were working to destroy the Somoza army and build up the country for the poor. The National Liberation Front’s leader, who went by Marcos, assured the Jesuit that the student army also had respect for different religious beliefs.

Later, the National Liberation Front asked the Jesuit to speak to the United States Congress to denounce theSomoza president of Nicaragua, whose regime had been supported by the American government for 45 years. “I told them, ‘To denounce the president was an important mission. It was a dangerous mission, and I accept the mission,’” he said.

After Cardenal’s hearing before Congress, President Jimmy Carter stopped providing aid to the dictatorial government in Nicaragua. Eighteen months later, the Somoza army was defeated.

Nicaragua began rebuilding, and Cardenal launched his literacy campaign. “Fifty percent of the country was illiterate,” he said. “Those who cannot read are poor twice. They are the poorest of the poor.”

Cardenal enlisted the help of 60,000 volunteers, which he notes is an impressive number for a country with a population of only three million, to live in the mountains and teach the peasant families to read and write. Although it was challenging, Cardenal credits the volunteers with the success of the campaign.

“What we did in the headquarters office is small compared with what we did with the young people in the mountains,” he said. “Despite threats from counter-revolutionaries, not one young person dropped out.”

Cardenal’s campaign raised the literacy rate in Nicaragua to 87 percent, and in 1980, the country was awarded UNESCO’s literacy award. Currently, the Jesuit runs a program to aid school systems in Nicaragua.

[The Heights]

Fifth grade students from Our St. Joseph Jesuit Parish Primary School in Kasungu, Malawi visit the site of the future Loyola Jesuit Secondary School with their headmaster (back left), Fr. Peter Henriot, SJ, development director of Loyola Jesuit Secondary School (back center) and Fr. Alojz Podgrajsek, SJ, project director of Loyola Jesuit Secondary School (back right).

Serving in Zambia on sabbatical in 1989 had a life-changing affect on Jesuit Father Peter Henriot. “Working in a village development project with local people and doing simple tasks did almost more for my education than all the other learning I gathered while studying and working in the United States. And at the end of that year, the people there gave me the best gift – the desire to stay.”

And for the next 21 years that’s exactly what Fr. Henriot was able to do, having joined the Zambia-Malawi Province (transferring from the Oregon Province) while working with the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Zambia after having spent the previous 16 years with Center of Concern in Washington, D.C.  And, then in 2010, he was assigned to another purpose – to help establish Loyola Jesuit Secondary School (LJSS) in Malawi.

Although it is a country rich in natural resources, Malawi, whose nickname is “The Warm Heart of Africa,” continues to be one of the poorest countries in the world in terms of human development. It ranks a somber 153 out of 169 on the United Nations Human Development Index, which is largely caused by lack of educational opportunities for its youth.

“There simply is no future for Malawi without better education for the young people,” Henriot states.

With encouragement from the Catholic Bishops of Malawi, the government of Malawi officials and local families, the Zambia-Malawi Province of the Society of Jesus decided to establish LJSS in the poor rural city of Kasungu.  As its Director of Development, Henriot is charged with fund-raising for this enormous educational project.

“People often ask me ‘what’s an old man like you doing in such a new and demanding job’, to which I reply ‘Jesuits might get tired, but we never get retired!’”

Henriot and the Jesuits of the Zambia-Malawi Province are working to provide a secondary education to young Malawian women and men that will embody the characteristics of a Jesuit education of intellectual and spiritual excellence, and a curriculum dedicated to life skills, character development and community service responsibilities.  Their vision is of a school that could accommodate approximately 500 students; a 50/50 mix of girls and boys. Run in cooperation with the Malawian government, LJSS will be a “grant-aided” school, helping to offset teacher salaries. This will make it more widely affordable to students from families of modest means.  In addition, significant employment opportunities will be generated throughout the community of Kasungu during construction, and through servicing and maintenance of the facility.

As a boarding school, the goal is to create a learning environment that is genuinely Jesuit in all aspects of life, with a required community service program in place so that students learn in many practical ways what it is to be educated to be “a person for others.”

“We want to set up an ‘elite school’ of the best educational values and structure, but not an ‘elitist’ school only open to the rich. I think this can be a practical implementation of something we all talk a lot about, the ‘preferential option for the poor’,” says Henriot.

Having done a lot of work over the years with the church’s social teaching, Henriot sees Loyola Jesuit Secondary School as a major contributor to what true development is all about: enabling the human person to become more human in community. What that means while facing Malawi’s very poor economic environment will be a big challenge for the school administrators and its students to overcome.

Right now, the Zambia-Malawi Jesuit Province now has a large financial task ahead of them, and has already begun to seek large donations from foundations and institutions to help fund this school project, as well as small contributions from individual supporters of this effort.

“To raise money in a time of global economic decline has been no easy task,” says Fr. Henriot, “but what particularly encourages me are the small amounts coming in from friends and others who have learned what we are about.”

There have been some very generous grants from Jesuit Provinces in Europe, who see the value of this educational effort at this time. But the project still has a long way to go – the goal is to start construction in 2012 and to be ready to welcome the first year students in 2013. Henriot is hoping that this immensely important task will be made possible by future donations and volunteers, and will enable a well-rounded Jesuit education for the children of Malawi to not just be a dream but to ultimately become a reality.

For more information or to make a donation to Loyola Jesuit Secondary School contact: phenriot@jesuits.org.zm

“We are privileged to join with the United Nations and other NGOs in the fight to help alleviate severe poverty in developing countries,” said I.S. Founder and President Jesuit Father Don Vettese, who grew up in Detroit and taught at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School for many years prior to starting I.S.

I.S. was awarded consultative status for its role in helping the UN work toward achieving its Millennium Goals, including eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and developing global partnerships for development.

The only nonprofit in the world whose work is focused on garbage dump communities, I.S. helps hundreds of thousands of people who live in garbage dump squalor across the globe. According the UN statistics, I.S. serves some of the most poverty stricken people on the earth. The nonprofit builds homes, schools, nurseries, medical facilities, community centers, adult training schools and funds microloan and food programs. They also organize service learning trips and medical brigades to garbage dump communities in seven countries. More than 95% of the donations I.S. receives go directly to its poverty relief programs.

“There are many people who have never heard about the garbage dump dwellers, the children forced to dig through trash for food, and entire families living in garbage dumps with rats, vultures, and pigs. These places do exist. We hope, in some small way, this status will give voice to those who have no voice,” said Vettese.

I.S. representatives will be granted passes to UN meetings, able to speak at designated UN sessions, and have certain documents circulated as official UN documents. They will also have the opportunity to be a part of a larger NGO community for the purposes of information sharing and partnering on poverty relief programs.

“There is so much good that can be accomplished if we open our minds and hearts to work with those in need who are fighting for a life with dignity and hope,” said Vettese. “We invite everyone to join us by volunteering on one of our service trips, donating to our poverty relief programs, and praying for us and those we serve.”

For more information about International Samaritan, please visit their website.

During the meeting, the members of the U.S. Assistancy and JESAM in attendance considered strategies for the various ways the U.S. and the African provinces might have opportunities to work more closely together, such as in the arenas of potential exchange programs between the U.S. and Africa’s apostolic works, in creating partnerships between apostolates, and by identifying tertianship experiences in Africa for U.S. Jesuits.

The African Jesuits also shared with their U.S. brothers the challenges the Society of Jesus faces in Africa around educational opportunities; with ethnic and political tensions; in health care, especially for HIV/AIDs and malaria treatments; and also the environmental and ecological concerns facing the continent.

“It bodes well for the future of the Society of Jesus that there will be well trained men in various disciplines to continue and develop the work of the Jesuits in Africa and Madagascar. It goes without saying that the Jesuits of North America have been extremely generous to us in providing the wherewithal for African and Malagasy Jesuits to specialize in these many and varied subjects. The Church and the Society are very grateful for this often unsung and open-handed support for the apostolates of the Society in our continent,” said Jesuit Father Michael Lewis, president of the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar. “There are men studying everything from engineering, informatics, administration, to pedagogy and the like which will help the Church and the Jesuits of the future to continue offering the work we do for the people of Africa and Madagascar.”

Thirty-seven African Jesuits participated in the gathering (there are approximately 60 African Jesuits currently in the U.S. and Canada), representing seven African provinces and regions, and 16 different countries. The participants came from various places throughout the U.S. and Canada where they are studying, ministering or on sabbatical.

In addition, five people from the U.S. Assistancy participated: three from the Jesuit Conference, including Jesuit Father Tom Smolich, president of the Jesuit Conference of the United States; a provincial assistant from the New York province; and a provincial assistant from the Wisconsin province.

The previous African Jesuit Gathering was in 2006, also hosted by the Jesuit Conference of the United States and was held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

One of the attendees of the meeting, Jesuit Father Jacques Randrianary of the Madagascar Province of the Society of Jesus who is completing his Masters degree in Film and Television at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Calif, created this short video piece from the material he captured during the gathering in Baltimore:

Fr. Olalekar oversee the Banda Retreat House in Mumbai where he helps conduct retreats and programs for those seeking spiritual solitude and a deeper connection with God through the practice of Ignatian Spirituality. And, recently, during a visit to the United States, Olalekar discovered an Eastern-based practice during his time in the West – a “movement meditation” called Interplay. Today, he conducts class with Interplay India and brings movement and dance to those seeking spiritual guidance and connections.

Olalekar takes his Interplay technique across Mumbai to those living in the poorest of conditions, in the slums and in the streets. Through his teachings, he strives to show a mind/body connection and has even taken his practice to those who have been cut off from any sort of movement whatsoever – paraplegics and people bedridden from the effects of paralysis. Olalekar hopes to show that everyone can be blessed with movement and filled with dance.

Below, he discusses his practice and what Interplay India brings to the people of Mumbai:

On this Earth Day, Álvarez de los Mozos encourages Jesuits and their partners to work toward justice, peace and environmental care.

With over four decades on the continent, Jesuit Father Mike Schultheis has devoted himself to providing Catholic higher education across Africa including stints in Uganda and  Tanzania. In the 1990s, he taught economics at the Catholic University of Mozambique, established its first graduate degree and founded a research and documentation center. He also was  the first president of the Catholic University of Ghana. All of his previous educational apostolic work led him to his latest initiative of opening the Catholic University of the Sudan two years ago.

With educational opportunities in Sudan being among the worst in the world and adult literacy below 30 percent, Schultheis realizes that the Catholic University of the Sudan is a critical component in moving the country forward after almost 25 years of civil war. The founding of the university also comes at a critical time for the nation as it prepares for a historic vote in 2011 to decide if Sudan stays united or becomes two countries.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference established the Catholic University of the Sudan as a centerpiece of their national program to help the country recover from decades of violence, famine and mass displacement of people. The vision for the university and its development goes back even farther, to half a century ago, soon after Sudan’s independence from Britain in 1956. The idea for the university was discussed again when former Sudanese president Jafaar Nimeiry met with Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1983, just months before a civil war broke out in the county and dashed the university project yet again.

“The Catholic University of the Sudan, as a national institution, is a dream long deferred,” explains Schultheis. “

You can read more about the new Catholic University of the Sudan here. You can also watch the interview with Fr. Schultheis on the progress of the Catholic University of the Sudan produced by National Jesuit News last year when the school launched its second faculty of agricultural and environmental sciences in Wau.

The Jesuits are probably best known for their work in education yet, the Society of Jesus is also the largest missionary order in the Roman Catholic Church. This vibrant apostolate dates back to St. Francis Xavier, the patron saint of foreign missions, and his work in South and East Asia.

The Wisconsin Province Jesuits recently renewed a bond with the Kohima region of northeast India. This area, known as the “seven sisters” (for seven states), spans a rugged triangular region of lower Himalayan terrain that borders Tibet, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan. Th Wisconsin twinning relationship was created in a spirit of mutual sharing. It identifies particular areas of cooperation and a commitment to accompany indigenous people. Jesuit Father Tom Krettek, provincial of the Wisconsin province, and his international assistant John Sealey visited Kohima this year to help deepen this bond.

While there, Fr. Krettek and Sealey visited Jesuit schools, health clinics, the Jesuit novitiate in Kohima along with other Jesuit ministries in the area. The video below highlights their visit to Kohima.