|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 Homepage | The person | The family | The friends | Sitemap | Search | Contact  News  Year 2005 October 2005 : a new phase in the life of Faith and Light International Français | English | Español |  PrintIn thanks giving, let's retrace Father Joseph's steps Father Joseph Larsen, pilgrim of trust  Father Joseph, from the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and originally from the Netherlands, spent more than twenty-four years in the Philippines, as a teacher at the seminary, leader of training sessions, spiritual director of seminaries, giving support to the parishes etc.At the beginning of the 1980’s, he took a sabbatical year which he spent with the Little Brothers of Jesus. This year allowed him to experience “a pilgrimage of trust”. For a month, he went around the Bay lagoon and around his parishes living as a poor man, without a penny to his name. He never lacked a single thing, relying on the kindness and hospitality of the local people. With a desire to get ever closer to the poor, he left to live with the “Squatters” in Bicutan in an illegally built shanty town. A family offered him an old junk room to stay in. Here, people sleep on a wooden benches narrower than your back, you have to use the public toilettes and showers, with rats and cockroaches as companions! So that’s where he settled down, living as poorly and in the same insecurity as his new neighbours. With the small amount of money he earned through his drawings and portraits, Father Joseph was able to help those poorer than him. It was in 1985 that Father Joseph met the first Faith and Light community in the Philippines. Very quickly he felt deeply drawn to people with an intellectual disability and to the unique manner that Faith and Light has of approaching frailty but also of celebrating it. Father Joseph has always said that it is the poor people of the Philippines, so abandoned to Providence (they say “May awa ang Diyos” God is compassionate and merciful) and Faith and Light, that have led him to rediscover his faith and which have transformed him and still continue to do so. When he became the international chaplain in 1994, his provincial Superior asked him to return to Europe. He moved onto the barge “Je sers” (I serve), moored on the Seine in the Paris region. He continued the way of life he had chosen with the “Squatters” in Bicutan, living alongside the people that are welcomed on the barge: homeless people, those without legal papers, without jobs etc. Through Father Joseph, gentle friend and loyal brother, we met Jesus. Bella Feliciano Continent coordinator, Asia Southern Cross |
 |
|
|
