Don Orione in India a Story of Long Roots.


3 March 2002 Fr. Oreste and Bro. Michael landed at Shiva International airport in Mumbai, waiting a local connection flight who would bring them to Bangalore.
15 June 2002 is signed in the diary of the house as the official opening of our community then resident in OMBR Layout – Banaswadi, and the arrival of the first 9 boys.
This 2 dates are commonly considered as the birthdays of our Congregation in India.
Every birth is preceded by a pregnancy period in which the foetus develops till it becomes a full fledged person. In the case of our presence in India the gestation period was a really long one.
It was on February 1989 when Fr. Joseph Masiero, then General Superior of the Sons of Divine Providence was invited to India by an Italian sister of the congregation of the Sisters of Charity to see the possibility of opening a house for handicapped children in the Hassan District of Karnataka. What he saw filled him with enthusiasm and he came home with a clear idea: India is our new “promised land”. It was actually not the first time that the name India and Don Orione had crossed paths. Already in 1986 some Indian priests from Goa, working in the islands of Cabo Verde, had approached our sisters there, offering the possibility to come and work in a leprosy camp in their home land. The then Mother superior considered the proposal as too tough for that moment and so she neglected it.
In order to prepare the foundation Fr Masiero started the screening process among the confreres to find suitable candidates. The choice fell on Fr. Angelo Quadrini, who was stepping down as delegate superior in England and Bro. Oreste Ferrari, then student in the third year Theology in Rome. The mission was set to start officially in the second half of 1990. In December 1989 Fr. Angelo Mugnai, then General Counsellor in charge of missions, came again to India accompanied by 2 lay volunteers: Mr Francesco Piras & Ms Francesca Montaiuti. They came to Hassan, found a place where to stay, then Fr. Angelo went back to Rome and the two volunteers started approaching the authorities for all the needed burocratic procedures.
When Fr. Oreste was ordained priest in September 1990 and started preparing bags, news reached that the mission of India was not going to be. The two volunteers had been sent out of the country and had given a negative report to the superiors, considering mission India as too difficult and dangerous. Mission India had become Mission Impossible. Priority was then given to a call from Cardinal Sin of Manila (Philippines). In October 1991 Fr Luigi Piccoli and Fr. Oreste, Francesco and Francesca landed in the far east asian country. After one week Fr. Masiero died in a car accident in Venezuela. Mission India, considered now a dead project, was instead budding slowly underground.
In Manila our missionaries had the chance to cooperate with a very active priest: Fr. Balthazar Gude (now Monsignor), from the Diocese of Eluru (Andhra Pradesh) and later on the congregation accommodated the same in Rome for his studies at the Angelicum Pontifical Institute. As a token of gratitude, Fr. Balthazar invited Fr. Roberto Simionato (General Superior) to visit his diocese and other dioceses in Andhra (Hyderabad, Kurnool). The door was getting open again.
In the meantime the scarcity of qualified personnel in the medical field had forced some of our institutions to outsource staff from abroad. Among the comers were a group of the Sisters of the Destitutes to work in our house in Lopagno (Switzerland). The local director, Fr. Diego Lorenzi had the chance to come and visit their main quarter in Aluva (Kerala).
By the time of the General Chapter in 1998 the Mission India was again on the agenda of the General Council to decide.
People were again screened and sent to London to study English. In year 2000 our confreres started coming and going, having as European bases London, and Bangalore as the Indian one. At the beginning they were guests at Yuva Vikas, seminary of the Somascan fathers, and then rented a house in Banaswadi. The experiment endured for about 18 month, during which Fr. José Luis Simionato from Argentina, Fr. Geraldo Campos from Brasil, Fr. Lorenzo Benzi from Italy and Bro. Michael Iatalese from England had the time to investigate opportunities, study possibilities, evaluate problems and difficulties. Fr. Philip Kehoe, the Delegate superior of the English province, had come to visit several times. He even approached Bishop Ignatius Pinto of Bangalore asking permission to open a community in his diocese. Permission was granted. By now the long prepared dream seemed to have become a stable reality.
Not all the problems were over though. By the beginning of January 2002 it was time to plan for the definitive arrival of the new Indian candidates. Our four confreres could not agree on how to organize it and on the opportunity to do it. They reported to Rome asking for the experience in India to be put to an end.
Fr. Roberto Simionato, taken aback by the sudden decision, was not disheartened. To his mind came the fact that many years earlier Fr. Masiero was thinking of Fr. Oreste as a possible choice for the new mission. He picked up the phone and re-launched the proposal.
Fr. Oreste was then working in Jordan and far from thinking of a change, but he then accepted the challenge and here we are at the 2 March, date mentioned at the beginning of this article.
“God will make a way where there seems to be no way”. So goes a popular devotional song. What so many times seemed to be a forbidden dream, an unreachable goal, is now (after 6 years) a beautiful reality. 9 religious of whom 2 with already an experience as missionaries in Argentina and Italy, 2 novices, 7 postulants, several seminarians from 5 states. These numbers which make now the Congregation proud of being in the asian country, would not have been possible, should God have not worked in his mysterious way.
Don Orione too, in heaven, is now proud of his new sons and surely planning, together with the heavenly Father, for some more bright horizons to reach in order to “Instaurare Omnia in Christo”.
Fr. Oreste Ferrari FDP