Catholic missionaries deserve more credit

It is about time we give credit to the Catholic missionaries in Africa, Asia and Latin America who are at the bedside of those infected with AIDS and leprosy. One only finds Catholic nuns and Catholic priests in nursing homes and hospitals for the terminally ill. This is the plain, bare, unadorned truth. You don't find in those places militant communists or vociferous liberals that slander the Catholic Church. The Catholic missionaries remain marginal to those carrying subversive placards and giving political sermons against the Catholic Church.

Everybody in journalism is aware that when a pandemic, or any other tragedy hits the Third World, the missionaries are the first ones that provide help and true information. They never fail. They spill their love and care over the AIDS-stricken, the terminally ill, the seniors without a roof over their heads, the hungry, the children without parents. And they feed the least favored, the poorest of the poor.

They become hundreds of thousands of Teresas of Calcutta. That is the difference between the vociferous ones and the ones that spill their love to humankind. They deserve our recognition.

Emilio F. Marcos

Geneva