Again this year, Missioni Don Bosco is one of the two organizations participating in this event, wanted by the Congregation for Catholic Education, to support humanitarian aid projects in distant and needy regions. The focus of 2019 is the Amazon, further proof that the attention aroused by the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops from that region is not just a moment of generic sharing of problems and proposals but also a precise objective that Pope Francis assigns to the Church at this time.
This is the Concerto's XVII edition, a number that from the artistic point of view also marks a tenacity in assigning the attractive capacity of stars of international music to the large issues of international justice.
Prime Time, the organizing company, cuts a new milestone that places it not only as an operational but also as a creative arm with regards to initiatives that satisfy the need to bring different worlds together for the very purpose of solidarity. In fact, "to network" is the slogan that accompanied the waiting and performance of the Christmas Concert and hopefully, too, the continuation of the generosity that is expressed with "charity" but also with a renewed brotherhood with the populations of the seven States that govern its wide extension.
Also active with the Missioni Don Bosco Onlus was the Scholas Occurrentes Foundation, a body promoting education on a global scale, founded in Argentina by the will of Jorge Bergoglio when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires.
From the stage, Fr Cappelletti answered questions of the TV presenter, Federica Panicucci; he presented the project of a new reception center for minors that is grafted onto the pastoral action he has conducted with the Salesians and the FMA in that part of the forest that is Iauareté. He explained that the goal is to provide shelter and protection for children who are collateral victims of the vast collective hangover that regularly marks weekends in the villages. To cover hunger and lack of hope, the consumption of alcohol is a extensive and deep social scourge, which causes parents to leave their children to themselves when they do not also become victims of abuse and in many cases of violence.
On the same wavelength, the testimony of a young indigenous woman who participates in the programs of Scholas Occurrentes. She explained what the original spirit of her people is, a people that suffers from the exploitation and abuse by the new conquerors, protagonists of a violence practiced to Mother Earth and to the people who live there: deforestation, fires, mining exploitation, pollution ... and the spread of drugs and alcohol that break the strength of the natives and - when they fail - force them instead to flee or they decimate them, threatening their leaders.
Don Bosco Missions, which with its president Giampiero Pettenon visited Iauareté at the beginning of this year, is strongly committed to making known the positive responses to the serious social and economic problems of the Amazon, with a presence over a hundred years old and a deployment of operators that, in proportion, has no equal in other regions of the world.
The Christmas Concert will be broadcast on the evening of Christmas Eve by Channel 5, with a replica scheduled for the day of the Festival. An SMS number - 45530 - will be used to collect the financial contributions of viewers to the Don Bosco and Scholas Occurrentes projects.
