SJES ROME

I am deeply concerned about the way the International Criminal Court (ICC) has so far handled the Kenya case in which the President, Uhuru Kenyatta, and his Deputy, William Ruto, together with a journalist Joseph Sang, stand accused of bearing the greatest responsibility for the Kenya 2007-08 post-election violence.

My work with refugees has led me back to a personal experience of loss. When I was a child, my family had a farm in Saguenay region (East Quebec), and later on we had to move to the city.

From the moment I was assigned to study theology in Brazil, I knew that it was going to be a challenge: a new culture, a new language, a new way of being Jesuit. And I wasn’t wrong. The first months were difficult and unsettling.

As an earnest young scholastic, and later, as a young priest in Gujarat Province, India, I was reflecting on how to make my commitment more meaningful, in keeping with the magis, 'the fire' of a Jesuit. Finding meaning in my call and articulating it in my own way has been a long struggle.

I have been involved in the broadly defined social apostolate from the time I studied philosophy during formation. I worked in a shelter for homeless women in Krakow, and later did my regency at the Jesuit Refugee Service in Berlin.

In April, as part of a three-week seminar on Catholic social teaching, my Jesuit novitiate visited the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola Prison. Though in the past I worked for a program that assists recently released prisoners, until this day, I had not interacted with the permanently incarcerated.

In the social justice nest I am a cuckoo that leaves its egg and flies away. My ministry has been to teach theology, and more lately to write for Jesuit publications and for Jesuit Social Services.

Bonfim is a small city in the state of Roraima, Brazil, near the border with Guyana. A group of Jesuits has been living there five years now, learning to work with the poor. Of the city's 15,000 inhabitants half are indigenous, mostly Wapixana and to a lesser extent Macuxi.

It was the 24th of November 2007. The Adivasis (indigenous/tribals) from every corner of Assam reached Guwahati, the capital city of the north eastern state of Assam, India, at the invitation of the All Adivasi Students' Association of Assam (AASAA).

The detainees in the only Slovenian 'close detention centre,' which I visit once or twice a week, arouse my deepest feelings and move my heart. My visit is always a special moment for me. The detainees are persons affected by Slovenian laws and European directives on migration in Slovenia, which is one of the Schengen (so-called) countries of Europe.