Radio Maria in the European continent (Daniele Trenca

Radio Maria in the African continent Africa: the continent of hope

A people who never cease hoping for a better life but, above all, hoping in God because their thirst for Love is still so great.

Paolo Taffuri

WFRM Africa Coordinator

On the international scene, Africa is becoming an economic interlocutor for the great world powers. Africa is a new market, where consumption is increasing day by day. It is a market where the great economic powers do not want to lose their slice of the cake. Africa is the continent of hope for those world economies that are growing and want to go beyond their saturated markets.

Africa is the continent of hope because Africans themselves never stop hoping. Although living conditions are among the lowest in the world, Africans continue to hope for a better life, but above all they continue to hope in God. Africans have a great thirst for God.

Africa has been little involved in the ideologies that have characterized the twentieth century. It is true that it has been tragically affected: the division due to the Cold War and the formations by both sides served as a backdrop to the real wars for the domination of resourcerich territories, but it has been an influence by reflection. Since the ideologies coming from the West have only created a façade, without any true inculturation, it is true that you can still find persons in Africa who, not having been indoctrinated, remain much more genuine. One can more easily find the essentiality of the human being.

It is in our essentiality, among those needs that the human person has, that there is also contact and relationship with the divine. For the vast majority of Africans, it is normal to turn to God every day in their daily lives: to thank him

for the food on their plate, to ask that a family member find work, or a friend be healed from illness, to praise God for his love that manifests itself, to beg him for the harvest to feed their family, etc. Africans have never stopped hoping and trusting in an omnipresent God. In Africa, the people are thirsty for God, they want to know God.

Faced with so much hope and thirst for God, the Church has the responsibility of fulfilling its mission of evangelization. If there are those who hope in Africa for its economic resources and new markets, the Church hopes with the Africans in the God of life and continues to spread the message of Jesus’ love with them. Radio Maria accompanies this work of evangelization done by Africans for Africans. At the moment this article was written, there are twenty-four African countries where Radio Maria is present and at least five others have requested it. It is a sign that evangelization continues, that the thirst for God cannot be quenched. The Church also seeks to serve this desire through the radio. Radio Maria remains at the service of a Church that, in the African continent, still has much work to do to bring Jesus to every person.

Radio Maria in the Asian continent Asia & Oceania: the two sentinels awaiting the dawn

The evangelization of Asia is one of the most ambitious challenges of the Third Millennium.

Joseph Nassar

WFRM Asia & Oceania Continental Representative

Asia, with its 4.4 billion people has attracted, even more than in the past, the benevolent and paternal gaze of Pope Francis. The Successor of Peter sees it as a land of the first mission ad gentes: “We must go to Asia”, he said in 2013, at the beginning of his pontificate. Since then, he has been carrying out this decision with trips to this quintessentially pluralistic world, where 144 million Catholics are living in, mainly, minority communities, that account for just 3% of the population.

Radio Maria has always been faithful to the pope, using its media reach to evangelize at the service of the Church. Carrying out precisely our motto: “Where a soul exists, there Radio Maria must arrive”, we cannot help but to fully attempt to do everything possible to bring Jesus’ voice and his peace to the Asian continent.

This means bringing religious harmony and God’s voice into a world of frequent religious

Radio Maria Erbil (Iraq)

Radio Maria India

persecution, consolation to the poorest coun- in these already immense countries. tries of the world where social discrimination is also strong and sows suffering, war, and per- Radio Maria cannot forget the other communisecution. A continent where people kill in the ties of the East, South, or of Southeast Asia. name of a God they barely know. Where there Immense lands, billions of souls waiting to hear is more thirst for and ignorance of God, there God’s voice. With St. Paul we can say: “Woe to Mary’s voice and her ma- me if I do not preach the Gospel!” ternal consolation will draw (1Cor 9:16) And Jesus still says near. ” Today vast numbers to us now: “Ask the master of the There have been many stag- of people still do not harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Lk 10:2). es reached in the Asia in our know Jesus Christ. path over the years: the Phil- For this reason, This call, therefore, is adippines, India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, China, as well as in the Arab world the mission ad gentes continues to be most dressed to each of us to love Asia and the Asians, to pray for them, and to help them, of the Middle East: Iraq, urgent.” even from afar. There are Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Is- thousands of ways to respond rael, and Egypt. Radio Ma- Pope Francis and each of us can choose ria now looks, like the senti- which is most appropriate for nel looks to the dawn, at the us. We listeners and members requests from other countries in the East to be of Radio Maria’s great family want to be like able to arrive soon and proclaim Christ to those the Patroness of the Missions, St. Therese of the who do not yet know him. All this without for- Child Jesus: “In the heart of the Church I will be getting to consolidate and expand our presence love!”, and we express it through Radio Maria.

Radio Maria’s identity in service of the Church and the community:

PROVIDENCE