I arrived on the plateau called \u201cLe Ch\u00e2teau de France\u201d on the fourteenth of July, 1956.\u00a0 The sun was scorching and the alleys were deserted.\u00a0 There was no one outside.\u00a0 In front of this emptiness, I said to myself, \u201cIn the old days, sources of water, road junctions, churches or businesses brought people together.\u00a0 Here, utter poverty is what brings people together.\u201d\u00a0 This was like an inspiration.\u00a0 I knew I was not facing a usual situation of relative poverty (as one would say then) or personal problems.\u00a0 I had to deal with collective extreme poverty.\u00a0 I felt at once that I was in front of my people.\u00a0 I cannot explain it.\u00a0 This is how it was.<\/p>\n
From that moment, my own life took a turn.\u00a0 Because, on that day, I vowed that if I stayed, I would see to it that one day these families could go up to the Vatican, the Elys\u00e9e Palace, and the UN.\u00a0 That blinding poverty spread before my eyes in stifling heat and absolute silence had me caught in a trap.\u00a0 Since then, I have been haunted by the idea that those people would never escape from their poverty as long as they were not welcomed as a whole, as a people, in those places where other people held debates or led struggles.\u00a0 They had to be there, on equal terms, in all places where people discuss and make decisions not only about the present, but also about people\u2019s destiny and the future of humanity.<\/p>\n
On July fourteenth, 1956, I signed my fate, even if I waited until November to settle for good in Noisy-le-Grand.\u00a0 Even on that day, the eleventh of November, I still held on to my old parish.\u00a0 I kept going there every Saturday and Sunday.\u00a0 Born as a child in deep poverty and having remained a man of poverty, I had learned to believe in everything, to dare anything, but still to keep something in reserve somewhere \u2014 put something away for a rainy day, a stale piece of bread in my pocket.\u00a0 There is not one poor person who would not do likewise.\u00a0 My own mother would keep a spare pair of shoes for her children, or a spare pair of trousers.\u00a0 When someone brought us another pair of secondhand shoes \u2014 we did get many handouts \u2014 my mother would say to the benefactor, \u201cThank goodness you came.\u00a0 It\u2019s just what we needed.\u201d\u00a0 When we were on our own, I would ask her, \u201cMama, why did you do all that play-acting?\u201d \u00a0She would tell me, \u201cJoseph, you don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 If you refuse what they bring you today, the day you do need something they will have given it away to someone else.\u201d\u00a0 I kept my old parish for several months as a security measure, like my mother who always kept an extra pair of shoes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I arrived on the plateau called \u201cLe Ch\u00e2teau de France\u201d on the fourteenth of July, 1956.\u00a0 The sun was scorching (…) Read more