19-12-2023 | di COOPI

Father Barbieri's "children" remember his death to gather his legacy

A mass in memory of our founder, Father Vincenzo Barbieri, was held on Saturday, December 16 at 11 a.m. at COOPI headquarters library. Members of our staff, donors and his old friends attended the event to remember his thoughtfulness and tenacity in dedicating himself to others.

A theology student leaving soon as a Jesuit missionary for Chad, Barbieri was in Lyon when he first came into contact with the international lay volunteer movements that sent young people to developing countries. Determined to also send young Italians, he turned to missionary magazines to look for volunteers who had the desire to support practically the neediest communities in the Global South. After receiving dozens of adhesions and after the experience in Rwanda of Bruno and Enrica Volpi, a newly married young couple, he founded, on 15 April 1965, COOPI - Cooperazione Internazionale. It aimed to train its members to live a meager and simple life to send them as technicians to developing countries.

His commitment with COOPI, however, did not end at the moment of our organization's birth. In fact, during a similar celebration in his honor that took place on December 9, the day of his death, professor Damien Musara Mufungizi, the adults' aplhaetization school manager of Walungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, recalled how Father Barbieri was always at the side of the neediest and those who, including through COOPI, made themselves available to them. Mufungizi's speech was read during Saturday's ceremony in Milan.

We still can see him with all his corpulence, a big cross around his neck, while he was teaching or preaching or distributing aid, always a little sleepy because he didn’t have time to sleep or get some rest. This big cross he wore around his neck is us, people in Africa or in various parts of the world where poverty is more widespread”.

Mufungizi wrote, bringing to our mind the memory of Barbieri when he worked in the many countries in which we have worked or in which we are still present today, when he fought for the injustices of the world on the streets or when even in winter and elderly, outside the theatres and shopping centres, he would ask passers-by for just '1 euro' to help 'his children'. For his children, professor Mufungizi always reminded us, Barbieri was dedicated until the last days of his life.

He had no children, but he was the father of many children and for these children he faced his physical suffering. Every seven years every year, he sent a letter to all his beneficiaries announcing his probable and imminent death (...): 'Get organised,' he wrote, 'work hard and make use of what you have received, so that tomorrow when I will no longer be with you, you may not be as unfortunate as I found you'”.

We hope that his work may daily guide the values of our work as aid workers and that his activity may be our legacy and stimulate, as Mufungizi pointed out, the desire of many other to put themselves at the service. So that, every year, in the month of his passing 13 years ago, we of COOPI and all those who care for the weakest of the earth, remember him with deep fervor. “He did so much for the world - Mufungizi concluded, - that we should think of him every day and every instant so that his presence will be permanent in our hearts”.