the face of the Church in the slums of the suburbs

The p. Stefano Mosca, a PIME missionary, tells of his mission in the shantytowns that sprang up around the city of Navotas. A feeding program for the children has been put in place, while mass is celebrated under a tent in a different location each week.

Manila () – It is a fragmented humanity that Father Stefano Mosca attends to in the parish of Santa Cruz in Tanza, on the outskirts of the city of Navotas, where at least 35,000 people live in various barangays, local neighborhoods. “These are poor people who emigrated from the island of Mindanao and whom local priests cannot reach,” explains the Italian missionary, recently appointed PIME regional superior for the South Pacific. “Priests have to celebrate up to seven masses on Sundays and a spate of other services during the week,” so Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of the Caloocan diocese asked Fr. Mosca and another PIME priest, Fr. Robert Ngairi, to open missionary posts to care for the poor, crammed into government housing (called pabahay) and squats, which are located north of the metropolitan city of Manila.

“Some 2,000 families live in tiny apartments, consisting of a room measuring two by three meters. Sometimes up to eight or ten people live. Inside there is usually a kitchen, a sofa and a television, and a plywood loft where you sleep “. Another 300 families live in stilt houses over the water, where tin roofs intertwine with exposed power lines; For its part, the government plans to build another pabahay of about 1,800 floors. “This means that in a few years we will have twice as many families,” explains the clergyman.

To reach the population, Fr. Stefano set up a feeding program for the children: three days a week, the two missionaries, with the help of volunteers, transport three large pots on a cart and distribute a snack of chocolate, rice and milk to about 200 children. “Sometimes the line of children seems to go on forever and we are forced to say we’ll be back the next day,” says the missionary. “But it is a way to get in touch with families, who are not used to seeing priests without vestments.”

The funerals are celebrated in the street and the mass is also itinerant: Father Stefano bought a store and sets it up each time in a different place, without a real program, because the mission of Tanza, like its inhabitants, lives up to date: ” The parents leave at four in the morning and return at nine at night. They go to Navotas, which has 350,000 inhabitants, to sell fruit, vegetables, sweets, electronics. Others do labor on the boats, fishing at night and they do other small tasks on the boats. The children, for their part, go to school in two shifts and the classes are 70 students because there is only one primary school and one secondary school. There are few well-to-do people who can afford to cross the river and attend private schools in the city”, continues the missionary. When they don’t go to class, the children look through the garbage for cans and plastic objects to resell them and get some money. Even Father Stefano, when he leaves the garbage outside to recycle it, takes care to put the plastic bag and cans in plain sight, sure that the municipality is not the one who collects it

“Migrants who have arrived here have left a family and often rebuilt another with a mistress. They feel uprooted and misplaced, and there is no real sense of community. The sacraments are difficult to administer and many do not even know if they have been baptized. But we serve everyone without judging them.

Sometimes even unpleasant events can be an opportunity to meet, says Fr. Stephen: “Recently, a 22-year-old volunteer named Iron died of a heart attack. He never missed the feeding programs.” When the missionary went to visit the family, the parents asked the priest to bless everything that belonged to the boy, convinced that his death had been caused by an evil spirit, and showed him a sheet of paper on which Iron had planned his life year by year: “In 2023 he would graduate, in 2024 he would buy a house and in 2025 he would earn a million pesos, according to his plans.” But God’s plans were different: “I tried to explain to the family that Iron now, although he doesn’t have his own home, has a room in paradise. Almost every day he walked two kilometers to get to the missionary post and help with snacks for the children.” From then on, parents and other relatives go to mass every Sunday, something that had never happened before. “For us, the missionaries, it is enough to be there, then opportunities present themselves to start the path of faith”.

A faith that has not yet matured in the settlement, although there are statues of the Virgin or the Black Nazarene in all the houses: “When they see us they ask us to bless anything, as if we were magicians or holy men. They remind me of the evangelical episode of the hemorrhagic woman who touches Jesus’ cloak to heal herself. Here people feel the need to touch statues and relics because they have a hard time imagining that Jesus is alive in their midst.” For the poor of Tanza, bread is for the stomach, but it will become bread for the Eucharist, Father Stephen is convinced of this. For now, however, given the need for the inhabitants to touch their faith, each week the priest entrusts a statuette of Our Lady of the Poor, to whom the community is consecrated, to a different family: “Every Monday we reflect on about the Gospel of the day, we took the statue and took it to another family. Any chance is good to meet the people of Tanza.”