Focolare Movement

A letter from the land of the Bangwa

Aug 22, 2018

The Focolare Movement recently received a letter from the district of Lebialem, Cameroon, signed by Mbeboh John, president of the Lebang Cultural & Development Organisation. In his letter, he expressed his appreciation to the President of the Focolare, Maria Voce, and to co-President Jésus Morán, for the choice made by the men and women focolarini […]
The Focolare Movement recently received a letter from the district of Lebialem, Cameroon, signed by Mbeboh John, president of the Lebang Cultural & Development Organisation. In his letter, he expressed his appreciation to the President of the Focolare, Maria Voce, and to co-President Jésus Morán, for the choice made by the men and women focolarini to remain there in order to tend to the “old, sick, children, men and women who have taken refuge at the Mariapolis Centre”, despite the risks involved in staying. 

Over the past two years, in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon, found in north and south west Cameroon, where Fontem, the Focolare’s Little Town is also located and where the hospital “Mary Health of Africa”, founded in 1964 by Chiara Lubich was built, an armed conflict is underway between the English-speaking separatist groups and the central government of the country, which is in the majority French-speaking. Last year a radical group declared the independence of the English-speaking area. Subsequently the bishops of Cameroon denounced it as being “an inhuman, blind and monstrous violence, and a radicalization of positions”. It is in this context that the choice of the Focolare was made in order to be close to the Bangwa people, a circumstance which President Mbeboh John says takes us back to the very arrival of the Movement when Chiara determined to fight three wars; “the tse-tse fly and sleeping sickness, educational deprivation and material development”. Read letter

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