“A missionary ad gentes is a bridge — someone who crosses cultures lightly, with respect and joy, to announce the Good News.” — Fr. Jorge Bender, OFM
When Franciscan missionary Father Jorge Alberto Bender first set foot in Mozambique, he says he felt a rush of emotion mixed with questions — and “a certain sense of powerlessness.” Yet behind those feelings was something deeper: the conviction that this was exactly where God was calling him to be.
“I am from a small town in Santa Fe, Argentina,” he recalls. “We were twelve siblings — eleven and one adopted, to make a full dozen. My mother used to talk about the children of Africa, and I remember a missionary magazine arriving at home. I think that’s where the first seeds were planted.”
Today, those seeds have borne fruit far from Argentina. Father Bender, a member of the Franciscan Order (OFM), serves in Jécua, a rural village in Mozambique’s Manica Province, where he and his fellow friars have been ministering for more than a century. His parish, Our Lady of the Rosary, covers eleven pastoral zones and seventy-four small Christian communities.
“The Franciscan presence in Mozambique goes back 126 years,” he explains. “Here in Manica, it’s been a hundred years of accompanying these people who walk in faith through these latitudes.”
Jécua is a place where daily life depends on the rhythm of the land — and on faith. Most families live from subsistence farming, growing maize as their main source of food. “The people here live from the work of the earth,” Father Bender says. “They face droughts, poor harvests, and yet they remain joyful. They walk lightly, carrying little, and they teach me that happiness doesn’t depend on having much. We are called to be happy along the way, while walking.”
That joy is all the more remarkable in a country where daily challenges are enormous. Mozambique remains one of the world’s poorest nations, with around 63 percent of the population struggling to get one meal a day and with very limited access to healthcare and education.
“People walk two, five, even seven miles to get water,” Father Bender explains. “They carry 20-liter jugs on their heads, just to have water to drink and wash. When it comes to health care, you can die very easily here. There’s a small first-aid post with just the basics — cotton, alcohol, sometimes malaria medication. And in Manica, the hospital is very basic too. Education is another challenge: many areas lack primary schools, and only a few children ever reach secondary or higher education.”
Yet amid these hardships, he finds signs of grace everywhere. “What moves me most are the faces of children and the eyes of the elderly. In the young, I see the future — the infinite possibilities to transform their lives and their families. And in the elderly, I see wisdom. Their wrinkles are the marks of time and history. Listening to them teaches patience and reverence.”
Over time, the Argentine missionary has witnessed countless gestures of gratitude from the people he serves. But none moves him more than when families receive a simple new home.
“So far we have built forty-seven houses for widows, the elderly, and single mothers,” he says. “When we hand over the keys, the tears of those mothers touch me deeply. They ask for a blessing. It’s beautiful to be a witness to a profound joy that dignifies.”
To him, this “joy that dignifies” is a sign of the Gospel at work. It’s the joy that springs from faith — a faith that knows suffering, yet refuses to despair.
For Father Bender, being a missionary means much more than working on social projects, even though those projects are essential. “If you wanted to kill me, you could lock me in a parish office,” he laughs. “I feel pushed to go out — to find new paths, new ways.”
“In these contexts, you cannot separate the proclamation of the Gospel from the work of building a more fraternal and supportive world. The announcement of the Word of God goes hand in hand with the bread earned by honest work — the bread that dignifies.”
The missionary vocation, he says, is about closeness. “The ‘style’ of God has three features: closeness, compassion, and tenderness. That’s how God draws near to each of us — and that’s how we must draw near to others.”
At Jécua’s mission, this spirit is expressed through five verbs: to sow, to gather, to share, to involve, and to restore.
“With patience and vision, we sow seeds — ideas, affections, opportunities — in this lost but wonderful corner of Africa,” he explains. “We gather fruits and scars that teach us. We share what we have, because what is not shared fades away. We involve everyone, so that no one is left out. And we restore — we give back to the land, to the community, to God, what we have received.”
These actions, he adds, form “an incarnate spirituality — a pedagogy of commitment and a constant learning on the road.”
Two areas of special focus are education and local economic development. “Ninety percent of families here depend on subsistence farming,” he says. “If we can help them improve their crops by even thirty percent, that means better nutrition for their children and a small surplus for the market.”
To achieve that, he has launched the construction of the St. Francis Agricultural Institute, a training center where young people will learn to become “protagonists, entrepreneurs, and transformers of their families’ lives.”
“We dream of creating a high-quality center that could transform this region — and perhaps all of southern Africa,” he says. “A permanent subsidy is an offense to human dignity. It’s better to create opportunities — to teach people to fish, not just give them fish.”
Father Bender’s time in Mozambique has also reshaped his own heart. “In my first mission experience, from 2006 to 2011, I wrote a small book called Africa Doesn’t Need Me — I Need Africa,” he says. “I think God brought me here to convert me, to change my heart.”
Here, he says, time itself takes on another dimension. “That’s why Mass can last three or four hours — people celebrate life. They sing and dance. They digest life, not just swallow it.”
In Mozambique, he adds, “people celebrate life with very little — but with great joy. The value of encounter, of looking into another’s eyes, of walking together — this is a treasure.”
As the mission looks to the future, the friars are pursuing several projects: building 100 homes for the poorest families, expanding access to clean water, and bringing digital connectivity to rural schools.
But above all, their dream is to form a Church that listens and walks together. “We want to be a Church that goes out to evangelize families through the sacraments, communion, and participation.”
When asked what drives him to keep going, Father Bender smiles: “The day I stop dreaming, it will be because I’m dead. It’s no longer the alarm clock that wakes me — it’s passion.”
As for his legacy, he hopes it will simply be faithfulness. “We are links in a great chain,” he says. “Others came before us; we only add our small grain of sand. The land of Africa is full of the tombs of brave heralds of the Gospel. We plant, others water — but it is God who gives the growth.”
He dreams of being buried one day beneath a leafy tree in Jécua. “Let the epitaph read,” he says, “‘Franciscan missionary who spent his life trying to do good — a missionary full of hope.’”
And his message to those in the United States who support the missions through The Pontifical Mission Societies is simple: “Join the miracle of love. Accompany us with your prayer and your generosity. If many small people, in many small places, do many small things — they can change the face of the earth.”
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