by Fr. Bernardino Andrade
(bernardinodandrade@gmail.com)
20-02-10 / 20-02-20
The 20th of February of two thousand ten (20-02-10) is a date that opened, in this beautiful Madeira Island, wounds that are still bleeding.
It was a Saturday morning. Heavy rains, and large floods that swallowed and killed lots of people, destroyed buildings, inundated streets with rocks mixed with cars turned upside down, cars mixed with uprooted trees being dragged to the ocean to never been seen again. This is a little image of that day… February 20th, 2010 in Madeira.
A few days ago somebody said in a local newspaper that we were very lucky that this tragedy happened on a Saturday. If it had happened during the week when the schools were full of children, with their parents desperately looking for them, without being able to fight the waters to drive their cars and use their phones, the tragedy would had been much worse.
Everybody suffered, but one of the things that most called the attention and the hearts of the community of the English-speaking people attending the English Mass at Penha de França Chapel at that time was to discover that the poor became poorer, and most of them were left in misery. In the words of Pope Francis, misery is poverty without hope. They have never been able to recover.
This was the moment when, at this chapel, we started the project «People Helping People». The main goal is to alleviate their suffering and our biggest dream is to free them from poverty. Its slogan is «To mobilize many people to help many people». (There is more information about the project on the last page of this newsletter).
My heart rejoices with gratitude for the generosity of so many tourists who leave Madeira Island know that because of them the poor become less poor, and because of them there is less suffering in this piece of land called the Pearl of the Atlantic.
Love and Peace,
Fr. Bernardino Andrade
* Photos of the 2010 tragedy courtesy of “Foto Canhas”