Rebuild hope and solidarity in todays families:

the experience of a community

Mr. Joseph Karumathy and Mrs. Celine Madassery

Our Immigrant Life in Italy
I am very happy and proud to present this before you as a representative of
Syro- Malabar Catholics and as an Indian Immigrant living here in Rome.
Without any introduction I directly enter into the point.
1. Reasons of Immigrations with Special Reference to our Family
We came here in search of a better and developed life situations. Our
preference to Rome was influenced mainly because of the presence of Holy
Father and historicity of this capital city of the world. The migrants of the last
15 years, coming to Italy only, are from low educated class, precisely because
in Italy they are confident that can find some jobs in spite of their lack of
education. Even illegal of getting easy entry into Italy was an added reason for
the new arrivals.
2. The Experience of Encountering a New Culture
To say it frankly, it was always a mixed feeling, to mention some of them:
hope for a better future, joy of encountering a new culture, little anxiety being
in a foreign land with a new language and culture and of course sadness of
being cut off from our parents and relatives. The fact that majority of us are
cut-off from the family ties in homeland, where family relationships are down
rooted and much revered, made our stay in this foreign land, psychologically
speaking, sometimes difficult and at times miserable.
We are thankful to some of our Italian friends who were ready to help us.
However we do not hide the fact that we really missed some information and
orientation which were so necessary for a new comer.
3. Ecclesiastical Help: Both Local Church in General and Syro-Malabar
Church in Particular
Thanks to the abundant help from the ecclesiastical authorities here in the
Vicariate of Rome, now we have spiritual assistance in our liturgical rite and
our religious traditions, which we did not have in the beginning. In the recent
years, we are provided with the facilities for frequenting the liturgical service
in our mother tongue, on Sundays, Thursdays, and feast days. Mother tongue
makes one better pray.
In India we were brought up in intense inter-dependence among the family
members and in our religious groups. When we came here, we felt really
abandoned due to lack of assistance from the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities. The official governmental services, extending to the immigrants
were not known to the immigrants. Moreover adding to this, we had cultural,
language barriers.
Now we are very thankful to Italian ecclesiastical authorities for granting
the pastoral guidance in our own language and tradition. We are very glad and
thankful to the CEI and in particular the Vicariate of Rome.

4. Our Proposals
It is absolutely certain that the Christian community can be of much help to
the immigrants. Here we make some proposal for the better and organized
functioning of the system.
1. Our liturgical celebrations are conducted in various parts of Italy, more
particularly in the diocese of Roman. We are grateful to the concerned
authorities for granting these opportunities for us. At this point, we would like
to make an important proposal. Now we have liturgical celebrations at various
timings depending on the availability of the concerned churches. This
sometimes creates uncertainty with regard to the timings. The inconsistency
with regard to the timing of liturgical worships, affect the work of daily
wagers. Moreover we are in a way compelled to satisfy with the participation
of Holy Masses on Sundays and very necessary liturgical services due to lack
of a permanent place of worship and religious activities.
We are very proud to say that our religious formation in India, from childhood
days onwards, is always framed around the church. Our communities are
formed in and around a church. When we come to Italy, as a believer, one
finds it very difficult to build up his or her religious activities in the absence of
a permanent place of worship. Hence we humbly present before this assembly
and the concerned hierarchical authorities our real need of having at least one
permanent place of worship in Rome for each community with full freedom.
To make it clear, it would be of great pastoral, spiritual help to the members of
our ethnic group, if we have a church with some sort of autonomous powers.
2. Second, it is very easy to understand the absence of parents affect the
formation of children. Family relations remain intact while children remain
with their parents. Many parents sent their children back to India for
education. It would be of great help to the parents, if the Syro- Malabar
Church can have a school to educate their children. It would be of help not
only to the students from India but also for other English speaking immigrants
from the various parts of the world. Such an attempt, along with Italian
language and culture learning, would be beneficial to form a group of children
with universal outlook and with meaningful cultural exchange among the
immigrant children.
5. Activities of Our Church
a) Many unemployed or under-employed people from the developing
countries, especially from Asia longing to work abroad, fall prey in the hands
of the illegal recruiters. That in turn leads to catastrophic results with money
and effort wasted. Only when they arrive here, they realize they are cheated
and many faced crucial unemployment and physical and mental abuses from
the employers. Proper guidance is to be given in the homeland itself so that
they many not fall prey in the greedy hands. We try to provide the better
information to the new comers from the homeland itself.
b) We provide special assistance with regard to the documentation of legal
status.
c) We help the new comers with special job orientation programmes,
language learning programmes (with special assistance from Roman Vicariate
and CEI).
d) Since many of the immigrants are not well educated they deserve more
spiritual and discernment helps from their pastors. Our pastors are ready to
provide that.
e) We always pay special attention to that our activities are oriented to help
the people to integrate to the new culture.
f) Weekly, monthly, annual basis pastoral activities are conducted. Annual
retreats are conducted. We make sure each immigrant is enrolled in the parish
register, so that he may have better care and access to the various units of the
pastoral activities. For the smooth functioning of all our activities, we have
divided our parish into nine centres, and we have formed various committees
in each centre. Each committee together with our parish priest, assistant parish
priest, priest-animator of each unit, sisters and seminarians in-charge of each
unit, facilitate and organize various programmes.
g) In our activities, we give special emphasis to women empowerment and
various training programmes for the women under the auspices of Matrujothi,
and association for women, are being organized.
h) We have a St. Vincent de Paul charitable society which helps those who
are in need of financial or other aids. Thanks to the admirable assistance from
the Roman Vicariate, we have special financial help to bring back the mortal
remains of the departed persons from our community to our homeland.
i) Even in the absence of permanent place to gather together, we organize
various cultural and social events to keep the community spirit intact.
j) Since, as we all know, family is the resource to overcome the crisis, we
conduct a special programme named Home Mission which promotes
interpersonal relationships among the family members through counseling and
prayer service. For door-to-door campaign, we are blessed with the presence
of four fulltime nuns for the accomplishment of this mission of family
apostolate.
k) In India we still have faith formation classes at least till the age of 17. It
provides a strong foundation to a religiously healthy family. Here in Italy, we
follow the same system. Every Sunday after the Holy mass we have faith
formation classes for the children. And also we give special marriage
preparation courses.
l) We conduct special programmes to help the youth to lead a value based
life. Through this, we help them to adopt and incorporate the values of this
country.
As conclusion, we would like to bring to your attention the following
points.
1. We are thankful to the ecclesiastical authorities of Rome for their
wonderful support in this unique city of Rome.
2. A well organized communitarian program under the able leadership of
own pastors is found absolutely necessary to cater to the basic spiritual,
psychological, familial and other needs of the immigrant coomunity.
3. As an immigrant community, we hope and pray to the Almighty that we
may be blessed with a permanent place for religious worship and a
school for the immigrants through which we may be enabled to enhance
the very family life which is the very basis of the life of the Church