by Antonina Zielinska
RIO DE JANEIRO – Following Pope Francis’ footsteps, Father Ray Roden, spiritual director at the Cathedral House of Formation, Douglaston, took two local seminarians to the Varginha “favela,” or slum neighborhood.
“It wasn’t cardboard houses or anything, but the standard of living was low,” said seminarian Mike Plona. “They were so cramped.”
Father Roden, Plona and seminarian Jose Diaz attended a Mass in St. Geronimo parish led by seven Argentinian priests who had been ordained by Pope Francis when he was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
“I thought it was so beautiful,” Diaz said. “There is a care and solidarity with those who are poor. That is the true gospel…because that is where God is, where Jesus is.”
After the Mass, a local parishioner led the Brooklyn priest and two seminarians around the streets of the neighborhood. She asked people who were watching from their windows if they wanted their houses to be blessed.
“It was beautiful to see that in the mist of poverty they were very faith filled,” Diaz said. “In the middle of everything that was happening, they still wanted us to come into their home and wanted to pray.”
However, Plona said not everyone was as friendly. “Other people didn’t want to deal with us because we were outsiders,” he said.
Plona said visiting the favella was a blessing because they were able to experience “being in the footprints of Pope Francis and seeing the importance of priests and the Church in poor areas.”
On the second day of his pastoral visit to Brazil, Pope Francis visited one of this city’s notorious “favelas.” The Pope denounced corruption and a “culture of selfishness and individualism” and called for a “culture of solidarity” in pursuit of social justice.
While stressing the need to alleviate material suffering, he also said that “real human development” requires the promotion of moral values, to satisfy a “deeper hunger, the hunger for a happiness that only God can satisfy.”
The July 25 speech was the pope’s first major statement on social and economic questions during his visit to Brazil.