by Father Bernardino
«Be open to be surprised» is a sentence I heard a few days ago. «I found God by surprise» is the refrain from a touching Thanksgiving hymn that has been sung many times by the Soprano, Cátia Marques, here at the English Mass at the Chapel.
Last Sunday (July 5th) after Mass and after the cake, professionally baked by Manny, and coffee generously offered at the Moynihan’s Irish Pub, I had an unexpected surprise that has been bothering me ever since.
I don’t know how Marta (not her true name) found out about us; how she was informed about the English Mass and about People Helping People. What I know is that when I was getting ready to enter my car, this very nervous lady, with an expression of profound pain, approached me, pleading for help. Unfortunately I was not as hospitable as I wanted to be because the first thing I did was to ask her if she had a mask. She said yes, but she kept talking and getting closer to me, expressing her agony. Politely, but with no hesitation, I kept telling her that we could not talk until she put her mask on. She put her mask on. I suspected that she had been carrying the same mask for many weeks. That’s when I better understood what I had read in the beginning of this pandemic. What I had read was that this corona virus was going to be a genocide among the poor. They have less access to the information and because they don’t feel any pain they don’t understand why they have to wear things like masks, that don’t even look good, when what they really need is food and medication.
In a few moments she showed me her neck and her shoulders, completely full of scars. Her husband, with the help of his mother, had burned her with hot water, leaving a big part of her body full of scars. Then, in her words, he left her and their six children and chose a young girl.
Marta has six children. The oldest girl is thirteen years old and is mentally challenged. They were very hungry with no food to eat and no place to go. They lived on the other side of the city but they lost the place where they were living and presently are living in a garage on the other side of the city.
The first thing I did was to go to an ATM machine to withdraw some money using Carla’s card. But first I checked to see how much money People Helping People had available. Four euros was all that was available in the account. Any way I borrowed fifty euros and with that money I was able to help Marta a little bit. But after buying a bottle of gas how much money would be left for her to feed her family?
I asked her if she had a telephone. She said no. I volunteered to give her a lift and she was very happy to accept. After our arrival, she asked me to leave her there, said good bye and I came home.
This has been the nightmare that I have been living with during the last week. How to find her and her six children and offer her some more help? I hope she comes back to Penha de França Chapel to find us again. Maybe God will provide and together we will be able to alleviate her suffering.
Fr. Bernardino Andrade