What gives liberation theology its power is chronic, enduring, inhumane, and marginalizing treatment of classes or races of human beings that has lasted for generations.
It was a crime to teach the Africans how to read and write. One day I drew a map of Europe, Africa and USA. First, they were surprised to hear I was not a European, even though I told them I was American.
(In my ministery to women and children in the barrios, the older women did remembered John F Kennedy very well, and knew our country sent a man to the moon.)
The people were being taught they were Portuguese. When I showed them Portugal and then Mozambique, they were shocked to find out their country was so much larger.
The SE Asians treated the Africans the worst. I remember this general store owner who sat in the middle of the room with a small table and glass of lemonade next to him. He had a long stick and told the African men to get this and get that. One carried a small package with me to the car I wanted to do myself. This man looked to me with such humiliation, sweating running up and down the ladder…The Catholic Portuguese beat their servants. And I went to a dinner party with our teachers and heard the 19 year old Portuguese teacher slapping her servant in the kitchen, he coming out trembling and sweating.
About the heat, the nursing mothers with the new government were now told they were to till the fields with picks and the men were to work in town. They said they could do so little, they were so hot and tired.
The British treated the natives fairly well but considered them the cast offs of the slave trade, inferior people, unable to learn. I was invited to an English party to meet the head of Sena Sugar from England and told him it was a matter of finding the right key to help open their minds and he left the room…It was the British colonialists in town who spread nasty rumors about us and pastor told me never to be in contact with them again. A blood bath is soon happening in Zimbabwe.
I heard a hauntingly beautiful song sung by the Africans at Mass and around the mission and asked Fr Francisco what were they saying…He said they were asking ‘Why do you persecute me?’
It made me cry.
And it started bothering me when I would see religious people as well look at them as inferiors and just want to pray for them. Later the Africans told me they considered those Catholics racist. They could tell.
So I came home fractured. To women’s ordination, a church turned in on itself, soft, effeminate. My faith was damaged. It was the rosary who healed my soul. In the late 1980’s I had this dream about my pastor working along the borders, helping people escape the military. I shared it with my friend. We prayed a 54 Day Novena for the Mozambicans because the Marxist government would not allow humanitarian aid. At the very last day of our novena, the doors were opened. Fr Francisco wrote back saying so much aid was finally coming in.
You can play on words just so much. What we have is the Word Made Flesh, the flesh derived of our Mother, Mary. The rosary is most powerful against heresies. I thought it was an old lady’s prayer. When the women missionaries prayed the rosary, I would not go in but would have nothing to do. Finally joined them. But I must say, I did not ever see the priests promoting ‘The Luta’ pray the rosary!
What is bothering me now is how many Catholics are left in Zambezia and who is in charge of St. Francis Church.
