Stories of faith

When I left Port Moresby on Monday, at the end of Pope Francis’ three-day visit to Papua New Guinea, my mind was full of images and emotions and the memories of an extraordinary country. But as I came away, two stories stuck in my mind. Personal stories of ordinary people that I came across as I chatted with the person standing next to me at some of the papal events.

I had travelled to Vanimo in the afternoon following the Mass in Port Moresby’s Stadium and I had been standing in the sun for quite a while. It was hot and my legs were tired when I noticed the woman on my right was holding a photograph and two medallions across her chest. I looked closely, she introduced herself, and happily told me her story.

The time-weathered photograph she clutched showed Pope Paul VI greeting a man during what looked like a General Audience in St. Peter’s Square. The man, Carol told me, was her grandfather, the first Papuan to travel to Rome and to attend a papal audience in 1975. On that extraordinary occasion, the Pope gave her grandfather the two Vatican medallions she had brought, and that have been treasured by her family ever since.

Carol also told me she had walked for days through the jungle to reach Vanimo with her treasures to be with the Pope: “A priceless gift my grandfather received almost 50 years ago”, a priceless gift, she added, “I am receiving today.”

Were you afraid during your journey through the jungle?” I asked. “No” was her reply: “God was with me.”

An Indian missionary sister of the Immaculate Conception was standing in a queue waiting to greet the Pope before his meeting with young people began. She told me she had come to Port Moresby from the southernmost tip of Papua New Guinea where she has spent the last five years working in a mission with other pime Sisters. Every day, she said, they travel for hours in dinghies on the rough sea, while some of the people they assist walk for hours through the jungle to reach them. The people have nothing. They live in houses with no electricity or running water. Many die in childbirth or in their infancy because there are no health services. The rising ocean is getting closer and closer to the house the Sisters live in.

She told me one of their main aims is to educate the children to peace as tribal conflicts continue to cause, conflict, deaths and destruction. “We don’t consider Vanimo remote!” she exclaimed, “the real peripheries, like ours, are really unreachable.” But she is happy.

When I asked her if she gets scared in the dinghy she said: “No. God is with me.”

By Linda Bordoni