Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People

People on the Move

N° 106, April 2008

Address given by the Under-Secretary,

Mons. Novatus Rugambwa,

to the National Gathering of Circus and Travelling Show Ministries

(Sarasota, FL, USA, 9-13 January 2007)

Introduction

I feel deeply honored and am very happy to participate in the XVI National Gathering of Circus and Traveling Show Ministries. I thank the Organizers for the warm invitation, which gives me the opportunity to speak of certain considerations that bear on the topic: Welcoming Circus and Carnival People – Protagonists of a meeting between faith and culture, a specific pastoral care.

First of all I pass on to you the warmest greetings of Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, and of Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, its Secretary, whom some of you met in Rome on the occasion of the International Congress for the Pastoral Care of Circus and Traveling Show People. Our Pontifical Council is always close to you in your work to evangelize these people and is grateful to you for your assiduous and generous commitment.

The topic I have been asked to speak about is vast, and it would be difficult to try to examine all its elements. I will therefore limit myself to two aspects only: welcoming and protagonists particularly the youth. I hope that my reflections will further your dialogue and be a source of mutual enrichment.

Welcome

The world of the circus and Travelling Show – and you know this better than I do – is multicultural and often multireligious. It is rich in human values: love of the family, a sense of friendship, courage and generosity, not to mention its wealth of art, with which it communicates these values to the world. The persons who work in it speak their own particular language and have their own spiritual experiences, but they are also aware that they belong to a community with reciprocal obligations that last a lifetime. With their performances, circus and traveling show people give others the opportunity to come together; different generations meet together as they enjoy themselves. Moreover the attractions of the circus and the fair, the circus marquees and the fairgrounds with their roundabouts and rides, are often places of conviviality for all sorts and kinds of people. 

The Document Erga migrantes caritas Christi (the Love of Christ towards Migrants), published by our Pontifical Council, speaks in paragraph 39 of a true and authentic “culture of welcome” that Christians should practice[1], that is, a culture of welcome that recognizes the authentic human values of others in spite of all the difficulties involved in living with people who are different from us. I am sure that through your pastoral work you realize more and more that the circus world is rich in culture and traditions worthy of our attention and respect, so that it deserves on our part an attitude of welcome and readiness to listen.

Regarding the subject of welcome and conviviality of different cultures in the world of the circus and traveling shows, the Final Document of the VII International Congress on the Pastoral Care of  Circus and Traveling Show People[2] gives a series of pastoral proposals and recommendations, some of which I am happy to recall here:

Welcome in the Holy Scripture

In the Holy Scripture both welcome and hospitality are essential characteristics of the person of faith: to welcome one’s neighbour is to welcome the Lord. In the book of Genesis we read: “(Abraham) looked up, and there he saw three men standing near him. As soon as he saw them he ran from the entrance of the tent to meet them, and bowed to the ground. ‘My Lord’, he said, ‘I beg you ... kindly do not pass your servant by’” (Gn 18:2-3). The same “sacred nature of welcome” is shown in the New Testament too, as in the Lord’s words: “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me; and those who welcome me welcome the one who sent me” (Mt 10:40). In St Luke’s gospel (10:42) welcome is seen not just as “service” but also as “paying heed” to one’s guest, and this is the kind of hospitality that Jesus himself, a wandering preacher, asks of us. Finally, in his letter to the Romans, chapter 15, St Paul insists on the duty to welcome others, which he describes in its salient features. It must be Christian and profound: “May (God) ... help you all to be tolerant with each other, following the example of Christ Jesus” (Rm 15:5); generous and gratuitous, disinterested and not possessive: “Christ did not think of himself ... Christ became the servant...” (Rm 15:3 and 8); beneficent and edifying: “Each of us should think of his neighbors and help them to become stronger Christians” (Rm 15:2); attentive to those who are weaker: “We who are strong have a duty to put up with the qualms of the weak without thinking of ourselves” (Rm 15:1). All of this can be summed up in the exhortation: “It can only be for God’s glory, then, for you to treat each other in the same friendly way as Christ treated you” (Rm 15:7).

Welcome in the Church

It follows that local Churches and parishes must become “homes open to all”, “missionary parishes” to help people in their faith, including people who are only temporarily present, which means circus personnel and those too in the traveling show business[3]. It would also be a good approach to encourage a culture of welcome towards them in the places where they work. One could even envisage a specific ministry, including deacons and lay people engaged in this missionary field.

In this connection I am happy to recall the wish expressed by the Servant of God John Paul II that the world of the circus and traveling shows should become a frontline laboratory (a spearhead) for the great themes underlying pastoral work, ecumenism, contact with persons of other religions and the common commitment to build world-wide fraternity[4].

The Youth: Protagonists of a Meeting between Faith and Culture

In this frontline laboratory (spearhead) it is young people who have to play the fundamental role of protagonists in the meeting between faith and culture, a meeting that is both equally important as it is difficult. In fact, faced with the phenomena of relativism and religious indifference that pervade society, Pope Benedict XVI, following in the steps of his predecessors, loses no opportunity to draw our attention to this delicate problem of the dialogue between faith and culture.

Faith and culture constitute two dynamic facts for human beings and human life. Culture is “a privileged terrain in which faith meets the human person”[5]. It is a specific factor of life and being; it creates a series of bonds between the members of any particular community and determines the inter-personal and social character of their existence. The human person is both the subject and the maker of culture, in which they express themselves and find their equilibrium. True culture humanizes individuals and all humanity: through culture we become more truly ourselves[6].

Faith, in its turn, is the meeting between God and the human person: God in history reveals and accomplishes his plan of salvation, and man and woman respond to God by faith, welcoming this plan and making it their own, orienting their own life on this message (cfr. Rm 10:9; 2 Cor 4:13): faith is a gift from God to which human person’s decision must correspond. But if culture is the specifically human way to achieve ever greater access to being, and if it is in faith that we are opened to the knowledge of the Supreme Being, in whose image and likeness we were created (cfr. Gn 1:26), then no one can fail to see the deep relation there is between faith and culture[7].

Benedict XVI considers the opening up of cultures a fertile field for dialogue. “Today more than ever”, we read in his address to the members of the Pontifical Council for Culture, “reciprocal openness between the cultures is a privileged context for dialogue between persons committed to seeking an authentic humanism, over and above the divergences that separate them. In the cultural arena too, Christianity must offer to all a most powerful force of renewal and exaltation, that is, the Love of God who makes himself human love”[8]. Christianity is not a theory of morality, an ethical option, but a meeting with a Person, Jesus Christ. From the meeting with this Person there arises the necessity to adhere to the values of which he is a witness[9]. From the earliest centuries, the Christian message was “performative”, that is: “The gospel is not just a communication of things that can be known, but a communication that produces facts and changes life”[10].

To come back now to our reflections on the circus and the traveling show, I would like to quote a passage from the experience related by Little Sister Priscilla Buhlmann, whom you know well, at the Rome Congress: “Circus life teaches us a lot for our religious life and Christian life! For example: The daily moving and unexpected events of each day teach us detachment from our plans. Performers go on to other shows and workers back home ... teaching us detachment from our friends. And, of course, with moving every day or every 2-3 days, there is detachment from a certain place ...even though we tend to set up as if we were going to stay for ever and each place becomes ours, even if only for a day. But the constant moving and change of towns is also a huge help in beginning anew each day and in living the present moment. Circus life also teaches us, people of different nationalities, races, and ages ... and animals ... and earth, to live together in order to build something beautiful. It is also a school in accepting different life styles. The important thing is the show and getting everything up and down, because ‘the show must go on’. The clowns are a help to us in learning humility, teaching us to laugh at ourselves and to treasure a sense of humor that can help us keep things in perspective. The catcher in the trapeze act reminds us daily of the power of trusting and letting go. And the mechanics help us to remember that the Lord is always behind the scenes making things work and following us down the road”[11].

This quotation shows how young circus people – as protagonists of encounter between faith and culture – can use their art for the purposes of evangelization and how their way of life and work can become a kind of catechesis. Their journeyings make it possible for them to reach the farthest places and persons to bring them joy and hope. It is necessary, however, that they themselves should have a sound knowledge of the life and teaching of the One who is “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6).

Formation of the Young Circus and Carnival People

The Lord is calling you – chaplains and pastoral workers – to help the young people of the circus and the traveling show to grow in faith and progress in their knowledge of the mystery of Christ. You, too, are the ones who are competent and responsible for giving them everything that is essential for their souls: “the truth of love, which is the very essence of God”, in other words for instilling in them true love for the whole of the human person and for all people. You must also be able to “invest” in these young persons, in their formation, in bringing out the value of their personality, because the Church and the circus world need mature and responsible Christians capable of living cultural diversity in the light of the Christian faith.

Speaking of the young circus people as protagonists of the dialogue between faith and culture, we must not forget the role of the family, which is after all the first place in which both culture and human and Christian values are passed on. The culture of young circus people is that of the environment from which they come, that is their families, which have inherited a long tradition of itinerant and sedentary people, well suited to favor that union of different cultures which in fact constitutes the true characteristic of the world of the traveling show. In fact the family – parents, grandparents and relatives – is the reference point for the young people, the centre of their identity, the place where their love begins. The circus family is the privileged environment for the first preaching of the gospel and for training the young for dialogue, culture and faith.

Contemporary Culture vis-à-vis Christian Faith

It would be opportune to say a few words about the factors that have the greatest impact on contemporary culture and on the relation between faith and culture and which obviously are not without effect on young persons in the traveling show world. We could mention, in the first place, relativism and religious and ethical indifference which leads to an adverse change in the human values, resulting in some crisis of identity. All this leads to a growing mistrust of the human person in their humanity, a lack of sense of responsibility in life, a search for false values and an option for valueless choices – pseudo-values – which turn out to be only a deceit.

Another factor is “Globalization” together with modernity and the influence of new communication systems, the phenomenon of cultural and religious pluralism, the proliferation of parallel beliefs, etc. In this context, faith may end up being considered as a simple cultural value, but we know that it should not be like that! Christian Faith demands that we make our culture open to the evangelical leaven or yeast, proposing the values of the renewed Christian Humanism.    

I will limit myself to saying that the more young circus people succeed in promoting good inter-personal relations, the more they determine to bring together the people where they work, and the more they set out to build communities of persons aware of the importance of the meeting of our Christian faith and culture, so much the more will they facilitate that encounter. 

Conclusion

In conclusion I would once more express on behalf of the Pontifical Council our acknowledgement and gratitude for your commitment. In all simplicity I ask you to continue to give the young people and all Circus and Traveling Show People all the means that the Church offers us (Eucharist, other sacraments, catechesis) and the gifts that each one of you has received through grace (cfr. Rm 12,6), to help them to live their faith joyfully (cfr. Phil 1:25). Help them to know the reason for the hope they have (cfr. 1 P 3:15) and always to be ready for a dialogue inspired by love (cfr. Jn 15:9-12).

Thank you for your attention.