F E AT U R E
A POOR CHURCH FOR THE POOR FR EAMON GOWING REFLECTS ON HALF A CENTURY IN BRAZIL Aerial view of Fortaleza, Brazil
REDEMPTORIST FR EAMON GOWING FROM COUNTY LAOIS HAS SPENT ALMOST 50 YEARS LIVING AMONG THE POOR OF BRAZIL. IT HAS BEEN, HE SAYS, AN INCREDIBLE PRIVILEGE INTERVIEW: ANNE STAUNTON AND PAT O'SULLIVAN In the early 1970s, in Sao Raimundo parish in Fortaleza, a team of laywomen and laymen worked with you in the parish. Tell us about their work.
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y first assignment in Brazil was to the parish of St Raimundo in Fortaleza. I was given charge of Bela Vista, the poorest area of the parish. At that time, Bela Vista was a shantytown of unpaved streets, improvised shacks and no sanitation. Besides my priestly work (my first Masses were said under a mango tree), I began organising the people to look for ways to improve their living conditions and fight for their rights. One of my earliest memories is of inviting the mayor to visit the community. It was the rainy season, and the streets were a sea of mud. I had great satisfaction in meeting him at the entrance to the neighbourhood and telling him he would have to leave his car there and walk the rest of the way, which he did, trudging through muck almost up to his knees. A problem aired at most of the community meetings was the number of children not going to school. We decided to set up a little school with young people from the community as volunteer teachers. The project went well, and a visiting Oxfam representative was duly impressed. He suggested setting up a team of young people to work full-time in developing the community. Two of the volunteer teachers
REALITY JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022
were selected, and later on, two young men involved in community activities were added. The team surveyed the community and found that inadequate housing and lack of health services were the most urgent needs. Housing: In looking around for ways to help, we discovered that a Redemptorist brother in a neighbouring state had invented a system for making cement blocks that were much cheaper than the regular blocks on the market. Basically, he used less cement
and vibrated the mixture, which produced a block slightly weaker than the regulation block but adequate for simple, one-storey houses. The team received a grant from Oxfam and set up the system in the community. Poor families could come at any time of the day or night to make blocks. For every 1,000 blocks made, 800 were theirs, and 200 were retained by the project and sold to restock cement and sand. In this way, a considerable number of families improved their houses, which gradually changed the appearance of
the neighbourhood. Basic medical services: A chance meeting with a professor at the medical department of the local university resulted in her bringing medical students under her supervision to attend the community. So now, the poor had access to basic medical care. A later development was the setting up of a nutrition centre. The professor was impressed by the large number of malnourished children in the community. With the help of the team and a grant from Oxfam, she set up a nutrition centre to help recuperate the most severely malnourished children. This centre undoubtedly saved the lives of many children and gave many more the chance of a healthy future. During a period of five years, the team developed many other activities, such as adult literacy classes, vaccination campaigns, training courses for electricians, plumbers, and so on. When the Oxfam project ended, all four team members continued their involvement in community activities voluntarily. Do you still remember the night in 1976 when you celebrated a prayer vigil for the families of political prisoners in St Raimundo church while the federal police were driving around the church with all sirens blazing? Can you paint of picture of what it was like and why you were supporting Women for Amnesty in a dictatorship?
