By Christine Allen, CAFOD
Christmas Eve is the beginning of the Church’s Jubilee year. The theme is Pilgrims of Hope. Hope defines CAFOD’s mission because we witness hope through the communities we serve, in solidarity with those experiencing oppression, injustice and environmental degradation.
In the Old Testament, a ‘Jubilee’ meant a radical reset every 50th year. Based on God’s promise, land and property was returned to the original owner or their descendants, debts cancelled, and enslaved people freed.
Jubilees happen every 25 years. In Jubilee Year 2000, thousands campaigned for debt relief, securing $130 billion+ of debt cancellation for developing countries to spend on health and education instead of paying crippling interest bills. However, 3.3 billion people live in countries that still need to spend more on debt repayments than health or education. Nowadays much debt is owed to private banks rather than other governments and so we must now lobby the lenders to ease the burden on developing countries to bring hope to many.
Yet there is always reason to hope. A couple of years ago I visited Marsabit in Kenya, which was suffering from the worst drought for many years. Thousands of livestock had died, and pastoralists had been forced to travel for miles to find food for their animals, which meant that only women and children remained in communities.
We were supporting Caritas Marsabit in emergency food distribution. I went with their resilience officer, Bante, to see a huge water collection site. He had worked with this particular community to fix it up – clearing channels, fixing the cracks with concrete, mending the iron bars to stop animals and children falling in. There was no sign of rain, though, and there was laughter because some people in the community felt it was all a waste of time.
For another few months it seemed those people were right. Then the rains came, and the facility was filled to the top. While in most places the land had been baked so dry that the water ran off, and created flooding, this community had the water they needed to recover.
We have witnessed amazing strides to tackle poverty over the past 100 years, yet many more continue to suffer from the oppression of poverty, displacement, conflict and lack essential needs. Thankfully, our Catholic family continues to bring hope, despite harder times here in the UK, they join fundraisers, campaigns and most importantly, pray together for a better world for all. Throughout this holy year we are supporting parish communities to become pilgrims of hope. Offering a free CAFOD Jubilee Reflection guide on different themes of Jubilee within Luke 4:16-21, to help parishes to prepare for the Jubilee year, suitable for individual or group use. A Jubilee Guide ‘taster’ webinar on 4th December and Introduction to Jubilee Year on 18th January are open to all.