by Monica Poletto
Bogotà – In the south of Bogotá, in a former middle-class neighborhood, lies the “Barrio San Bernardo,” where the parish of “Nuestra Señora de los Dolores” is located. The young parish priest Juan Felipe Quevedo serves here, and a few months ago, Father Carlos Olivero, known to everyone as Father Charly, also moved there. Father Charly came to Bogotà to work at the headquarters of CELAM , developing assistance programs for people in marginalized groups and situations of dependency in Latin America. These assistance programs are based on the community methodology that is dear to the heart of the “Familia Grande Hogar de Cristo” network, which developed in Argentina from the experience of the “Curas Villeros,” priests who worked in the slums of Villas Miseria in Buenos Aires. Over time, the San Bernardo neighborhood in Bogotà has become the city’s most important drug trafficking hub, with streets filled with drug addicts, the homeless, and without medical care, seemingly unidentified people demanding and selling drugs day and night. The barrio’s appearance changed so radically when the people living in a poor neighboring neighborhood were forcibly evicted to make way for a major urban development project. A huge mass of homeless people subsequently moved to San Bernardo. “In the second half of the 20th century, the city of Bogotà experienced profound demographic changes that expanded its borders and altered its urban structure,” reports Father Juan Felipe. “These processes led to a geographical separation between production and residential areas, creating neighborhoods with complex social problems, like our San Bernardo neighborhood.” In the square overlooking the parish church, one can hear—like an incessant background noise—shouts announcing the availability of ever-new drugs or the arrival of the police. Everywhere you see homeless people, their skin scarred by life on the streets and drugs, dragging themselves along only to collapse onto the dirt and mud-covered streets.
“The rapid increase in the number of homeless people in our area,” Father Felipe continues, “has exacerbated social conflicts and transformed daily life in the neighborhood, exacerbating problems such as school dropouts, robberies, and the consolidation of criminal groups.”
“Relationships between traditional residents and the homeless have become conflictual, and the sense of community has diminished.
The other is no longer recognized as a human being, as part of the community, but as a threat. The physical neglect and the mountains of garbage on the streets contribute to the residents’ loss of hope,” the priest emphasizes. The name “Sanber” is now associated by everyone with violence and exclusion. Father Charly is accustomed to places of suffering and marginalization, having spent his entire priestly life before arriving in Bogotà in the Argentinian “Villas Miseria,” “among people who are completely at their limits, living on the streets, suffering from hunger, having cut off all their ties, and using a lot of drugs.” What he found here, however, goes even further. “The number of people living on the streets here is impressive. One study speaks of 5,000 people in a single neighborhood. A number so large that it’s difficult to imagine any solution,” he affirms. “Here, you see there’s no response from the state or from civil society. You sense such immense helplessness, and hope is difficult.” When Father Charly, Father Felipe, and some parishioners go out to distribute food, people run to them because they are hungry. “It’s heartbreaking,” Father Charly continues, “such an urgent matter that we must start right there. With the distribution of bread.” But alongside this urgency, the entire community must also be involved, which feels overwhelmed by the enormous number of ‘broken’ people who deal drugs and make the neighborhood uninhabitable. For Father Charly, “awareness must be raised so that the people who have always lived here understand that the homeless are brothers and sisters; that it could happen to us or our children, too, and that it is appropriate to respond humanely to this tragedy; that our task is not the social responses of the state, but rather our task of building bridges.”
“Christian hope, as the biblical tradition teaches us, is not an escape from the present, but a transformative force,” Father Felipe continues. “We live in the certainty that the love of God sustains and accompanies us even in the midst of darkness.” Christian hope is essentially communal, not individualistic or isolated. One of the challenges of our time is the reduction of hope to a private salvation, detached from human suffering. But it is the suffering face of Christ that we encounter among the outcasts of our barrio. He does not wait for them to be healed to approach them, and he is not ashamed to approach them. Therefore, “our community wants to be more and more a place of radical welcome, where affection and patience accompany people in their journeys. Hope does not consist in denying the drama of addiction, but in affirming that no abyss is deeper than mercy.” This space should also be physical. “Not just a service,” says Father Charly, “but a place of encounter. This is very important, because through encounter, people change. We are converted when we begin to discover how the other sees, how they feel, what is happening to them, what they are suffering. This physical space that we have begun to create will show us the way, and it is fundamental that it is a place where both the most ‘broken’ people who populate the streets of the barrio and the other people of the community can come and where this encounter takes place. Where the most broken can wash, receive medical care, and eat; where those who want to can begin to think about leaving drug addiction. We can offer services, but within the framework of integration into the community. These people, who are ‘the others,’ become part of us. Because when the community opens up, when it embraces and welcomes those who suffer most, it grows, it becomes richer, it discovers Jesus and is infected by his blessing.” Something new is beginning in the “Barrio San Bernardo.”
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