by Andrea Velocci

Despite my innate passion for the healthcare world, when I entered the Congregation, I did not remotely dream that I would end up as a missionary, in a Hospital, much less as a brother, nurse and obstetrician.

Fascinated by proclaiming the Gospel among the streets and squares during preaching missions, I imagined myself a CPPS missionary in exactly that way; but God, who always has His own plans, had something else “in mind”: proclaiming the Gospel among the wards and wings of a hospital in mission lands, in a reality such as the African savannah, where the “Call of the Blood” of those who suffer physically and spiritually cannot be ignored.

Thus, together with another confrere, Father Justin, for the past few years we have been at the St. Gaspar Referral and Teaching Hospital in Itigi (Tanzania) where “like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants” we have been “collecting” the legacy of this immense CPPS project that was sprung from nothing as many as 36 years ago by Italian missionaries and that today is a point of reference for the nearby districts and above all a point of “relief” for the many who, perhaps after wandering through different establishments, find from us care, consolation, listening and accompaniment, pillars that, like headlights shining in the night, allow us today as yesterday and, we hope, more and more tomorrow to keep our mission alive.