The prophetic legacy of Zilda Arns

 Numerous well deserved tributes have already been made to Brazilian physician, Zilda Arns —sister of the Cardinal of Human Rights, Paulo Evaristo Arns—, who perished in the ruins of the Haitian earthquake. Perhaps world opinion has not noted the importance of this woman, who in 2006 was proposed as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. And well did she deserve it, because she dedicated her life to looking after the health of the most vulnerable. For 25 years, she coordinated Pastoral of the Child, aiding more than one million eight hundred thousand children under the age of 5 years, and more than one million four hundred thousand poor families. With simple means, such as buttermilk, nourishment based on nutrients and other minimal resources ready to serve, she saved thousands of children who otherwise would have died. In 2004, she began the Pastoral of the Aged, that reaches one hundred thousand elderly persons.

It would take too long to relate her extraordinary work, spread across more than 20 poor countries. But I would like to emphasize the value of the spiritual capital that sustained her practice. In this, she went against the dominant system, and serves as an inspiration for the present moment.

There is a growing conviction that we will not emerge from the present crisis of civilization if we continue the same habits and the same consumerist and individualistic values that we have now. Dr. Zilda showed us how things could be different, and better.

She honored Christianity by living a mysticism of love for the suffering of humanity, of hope that there is always something that can be done to save lives, of faith in the strength of the weak when organized, and in listening to all, even to the children who cannot yet talk.

She had a clear awareness that solutions come from below, from society, but without ignoring the duty of the State. Social problems are solved, starting with society. To that end, she stirred up the humanitarian sensibility that resides inside each person, and inaugurated the politics of good will. More than 250 thousand volunteers, with no financial remuneration, joined the work alongside her.

A seminal idea, copied from the praxis of Jesus, motivated her actions: to multiply. Not only bread and fishes as He had done, but, in the present condition, multiplying knowledge, solidarity, and efforts.

To multiply knowledge implies to transmit to simple people the rudiments of hygiene, care of water, and periodic checking of a child's weight and nutritional needs. This knowledge strengthens people's self respect, and grants autonomy to civil society.

To multiply solidarity means that, to be universal, it must begin with the least, seeking to reach those who live in the corners where no one else goes, trying to save the most mal-nourished and nearly agonized child. This form of solidarity is the most scarce in the world today.

To multiply efforts, involves public policies, the NGOs, base groups, enterprises with social responsibility; in short, all those who put life and love above profit and gain. But above all it is to multiply generous good will.

This the substance of the spiritual capital that must lie at the base of the new world society that has to be birthed. The XXI Century will either be the century of the caring for life and for the Earth, or it will be the century of our self destruction. So far, we have globalized the economy and communications. We must now globalize planetary consciousness, and multiply the knowledge that is useful to life, universal solidarity, the effort to build that which has not yet been tried. Love and solidarity do not enter into the statistics or the economic calculus, but they are what is most sought after, and what may yet save us.

Physician Zilda Arns, certainly without knowing it, but prophetically, showed us in miniature that such a world is not only possible, but that it is already feasible.  

 

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.