62 years of happy missionary life
PGS Vice-province/Italy, 30 September 2020 -- The most widely-circulated Italian Catholic weekly magazine 'Famiglia Cristiana' (27 September 2020 edition) published a two-page interview with our senior missionary in PGS vice-province, Fr Valeriano Barbero, who for reasons of health treatment has returned to the Novara community (ICP Province of Turin).
The 82-year-old missionary, fondly called 'Father Val', shares that during his 40 years in PNG he learnt that the Gospel is never imposed, but the Gospel is shared at the side of the local people. He left at the age of 22 for the mission in the Philippines and after 20 years again was chosen to be one of the three founding members of the new mission in Papua New Guinea (1980).
In his interview, Fr Valeriano confessed with tenderness: "Somebody one day explained to me: I would like not your Crucifix, but I'm more helped by your hug, when I feel that you are not here to explain to me what is just and what is wrong, but witness this with your close life presence. This is what I understood only in my last years. Doesn't make sense to come as colonizers and impose our own faith; we need to live the Gospel side by side with the local people, day by day..."
"Now due to the Covid19 travel restrictions and my 4 year treatment of leprosy (NB 'inside the bones') I'm constrained to stay here in the Salesian community of Novara. They treat me like a prince. They prepared a celebration for my 40th anniversary in the missions of Papua New Guinea. But although I am very comfortable here, aside from pain caused by the leprosy, I have only one desire - to return home. This is not my life. Living among the people of PNG I understood that what makes me happy is only to bring joy to other people. Sharing the problems of their families, the efforts of our youth, the sickness, a frugal life filled with simple emotions. To be a missionary for me means to leave with a single way ticket and never desire to return."
We wish a speedy recovery to Fr. Valeriano and also a safe return to his mission land, like other EAO missionaries who are now stranded in their home land - Br. Jomar (Filipino missionary in Brazil), Br Alex (Filipino missionary in Pakistan) and some others.
