The Raoul Follereau Foundation (Malta) - The Order of Charity is a registered NGO [No. VO/0980] administered by the Grand Priory of the Maltese Islands of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem DECEMBER 2020 EDITORIAL December is a month when memories of past Christmases are recalled. I wish to share with you a particular memory which is still impressed in my mind after 50 years: the time I first met with a leper face to face. It was in December 1970 and with two other Maltese missionaries I travelled from north-east India to the south of that sub-continent for the priestly ordination of a Maltese priest in Bangalore. After 4 days of travel by Jeep, plane and train, we reached Chennai (Madras) and lodged with the Salesian Fathers. The Administrator of “The Beatitudes Social Welfare Rehabilitation Centre” offered to drive us there to visit this place. Fr Schlooz showed us various sectors of the place. At one point we were near some lepers who, with simple tools were producing useful household gadgets. As I approached, one of the men smiled at me and extended his hand… and I, auto- matically, shook hands with him. Then I suddenly realised that that hand had no fingers. I had touched a leper! NO. VO/0980 Years have passed, but when I recall that episode, I reflect on how Jesus touched lepers (Matthew 8:3), how he let them approach him, how he treated them with dignity and considered them ‘human beings. This was physical and psychological healing. But he would approach also other kinds of persons Inside this issue: shunned by certain classes of society of his time: he came near, dined with and welcomed ‘sinners’, both 1 men and women. Editorial This last month of the year, besides bringing memo- Patron Saints and Royal 2 ries to our mind, should also provoke us to reflect Lepers – 1 upon our attitudes of welcome and inclusion. As we read the many pages of this Charity Newsletter, we 3 DATION (MALTA): NGO Cont….. may ponder on how wide is our vision of ‘others’ and how Christlike is our approach. 4 Cont...... Christ came for all. Christmas belongs to all. Let us be part of this ‘all’. L-istorja ta Awal Inusah 5 mill-Ghana The story of Jacob Rev Joe Cini S.D.B INDONESIA Marina: Rescue in the 6 Rainforest 7 8 Order of Charity Newsletter RAOUL FOLLEREAU FOUN Page 2 ORDER OF CHARITY NEWSLETTER The event of the transport of the holy relics from Kition to Constantinople was immor- Patron Saints and Royal talized by Arethas, Bishop of Caesarea, in Lepers – 1 two of his famous speeches, made on the occasion. In the first speech he praises the arrival of the sacred relics from Kition to Constantinople, and in the second one he Saint Lazarus of Bethany describes in detail the procession which the emperor formed to carry the relics from [Feast day 17th December] Chrysoupolis to the great cathedral of St Sophia. Leon, besides the church he had There is no doubt that Lazarus of Betha- built at Kition after the Saint's name, also ny was a real person, but beyond the built a second one in Constantinople in scripture references nothing secure is fur- honor of the Saint. After the capture of ther known about him. Beside the story of Constantinople by the Franks in 1204, the his resurrection by Jesus from the dead, Crusaders, besides the other treasures Lazarus is reported to have subsequently they carried to the West, they also carried attended a banquet at the house of Si- the Saint's holy relics to Marseilles, from mon, a healed leper. During the banquet, where, later on, they disappeared and up Lazarus sister Mary washed and anoint- to the present day they have not been ed Jesus’ feet. The Jewish priesthood traced. On the 2nd November 1972, during sought to have Lazarus killed. He certain- renovation works on the church, part of the ly would have been a persona non grata in Israel after the resurrection of Jesus about a week later. All the references to the name Lazarus in the New Testament can be considered a preparation to Christ’s death and subsequent resurrec- tion. No mention is made in the New Testa- ment of his activities after being brought back to life by Jesus, but several tradi- tions survive. In the eastern tradition, he and his sisters – Mary and Martha – were set adrift in a leaking boat by the Jews at Jaffa. They made a safe landfall at Cy- prus. According to tradition he was or- dained first Bishop of Kition, modern Lar- naka, by Apostles Paul and Barnabas. He lived there for about thirty years, dy- ing at the age of sixty. According to Cyp- riot traditions, he was buried in a sar- cophagus housed in the Byzantine Church of St Lazarus at Kition with an in- scription "The four-day Lazarus, friend of Christ". In 890 AD the emperor of Byzan- tium Leon VI Sophos transferred Lazarus' remains to Constantinople and in return sacred relics of St Lazarus were discov- for which he built a church at Larnaca de- ered in a marble sarcophagus under the voted to St Lazarus. The church survives altar. The cranium can still be viewed in the to this date. Church at Larnaca; while the Order of St. DECEMBER 2020 Page 3 John brought to Malta with them from arus of Jerusalem” on one side, and a Rhodes a reliquary consisting of the right leper with his face covered in spots hold- foot of St Lazarus. This was eventually de- ing a clapper and the inscription “The posited in their Conventual Church of St seal of the Lepers”. These two sides John the Baptist at Valletta. may have been intended to be depic- tions of the two scripture personalities or A western apocryphal tradition places Laza- the dual membership – healthy monks rus and his family in Provence in southern and lepers - of the 12th century Order. France. Lazarus proceeded to Marseilles The Order of St Lazarus expanded its and became Bishop of Marseilles. During holdings in Europe establishing several the first persecution under Emperor Nero he leprosaria bearing the name of the Or- hid himself in a crypt, over which the cele- der’s titular saint. These eventually be- brated Abbey of St-Victor was constructed came known as lazars or lazarettos, and in the fifth century. He was martyred by Em- subsequently adopted as quarantine peror Domitian (81-96 AD). His body was hospitals against pestilent disease later translated to Autun, and buried in the cathedral of that town. It is only in the thir- Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem (1174- teenth century that the belief that Lazarus 1182) had come to Gaul with his two sisters and had been Bishop of Marseilles spread in The film Kingdom of Heaven released in Provence. While Pope Benedict IX in 1040 2005 featured the story of Bailen of Ibel- mentions St Lazarus on the occasion of the in and the loss of Jerusalem. In the sto- consecration of the new church of St-Victor, ry, Baldwin IV the Leper King of Jerusa- the Pope speaks only of relics of St Lazarus lem is featured as a successful diplomat and does not refer to his having been Bish- who maintains good peaceful relation- op of Marseilles. The most ancient Pro- ships with Sultan Salah al-Din. All politi- vencal text alluding to the episcopacy of St cal negotiations fail with the death of the Lazarus is a passage in the "Otia imperialia" king, plunging the Kingdom of Jerusalem of Gervase of Tillbury (1212). Thus, the be- into turmoil and conflict leading to the lief in his Provencal apostolate is of very disaster at the Battle of Hattin and the late date. The crypt of the Church of St- Fall of Jerusalem in October 1187. First Victor at Marseilles does contain an epitaph mention of Balwin developing leprosy dated to the fifth century commemorating was made in the chronicle written by his the burial of a bishop named Lazarus. This tutor William of Tyre who observed the probably refers to the 5th century Lazarus, youth’s insensitivity to pain caused by Bishop of Aix, who was consecrated at Mar- the disease. seilles about 407, and who, having had to abandon his see in 411, passed some time William of Tyre in his book Historia re- in Palestine, whence he returned to end his rum in partibus transmarinis gestarum days in Marseilles. The body of this Lazarus wrote that “It so happened that once may be the one claimed to have been bur- when he was playing with some other ied at the Cathedral of Autun in Burgundy, noble boys who were with him, they be- destroyed in 1766. gan pinching one another with their fin- gernails on the hands and arms, as play- The composite Lazarus personalities depict- ful boys will do. The others evinced their ed in the Scriptures was associated during pain with yells, but, although his play- the medieval period with leprosy and adopt- mates did not spare him, Baldwin bore ed as its patron by the fledgling hospitaller the pain altogether too patiently, as if he Order dedicated to the care of lepers in Je- did not feel it. When this had happened rusalem. The seal of the Jerusalem hospital several times, it was reported to me. At of the Order of St Lazarus shows a priest first I thought that this happened be- holding a crosier and the inscription “St Laz- cause of his endurance, not because of Page 4 ORDER OF CHARITY NEWSLETTER use of drugs including herbal syrups, ene- insensitivity.