Nowrot Piotr, a musician and an organist, entered the Society of the Divine Word in 1974 after completing his studies in theology and sociology at the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland. His passion for music started when he was a child. He sang as a contralto and as a tenor in a children’s choir in Poznan when he was eight until he was nineteen.

He observed that music is closely related to religion, for the fact that Jesus, the apostles and even the Virgin Mary along with the church have been singing throughout the generations. At the moment, he claims that this discipline is “one of the methods for the new evangelisation.” The life of Nowrot Piotr is pure art in a family that has great affection for culture and the arts.

The image of an iceberg is often used to illustrate how much of cultures, contexts, and life situations are below the surface—that is, about 90%. Sincere attempts to acknowledge, understand, appreciate and bridge the differences among nationalities, ethnicities, “races”, generations, genders, personalities, and economic/social classes requires looking under the “water level.” That area can seem to be unclear, overly complex, and even contradictory at first, whether we are looking at our own “world,” but especially when plunging into the depths of the “world” of the “other.” And yet as Catholics and as missionaries, we believe that God’s grace and life can be discovered “in the depths” of those “worlds” of meaning, order and identity.

Documentary Video made by Alfons Müller, SVD and Bana Ngayime ( Divine Word Missionaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo).

In Vienna, Fr. Franz Helm talks with enthusiasm about a new form of prayer: called the Guerrilla Prayer. This way of praying was inspired in the context of guerrilla activities.

Christians are a minority in Chad. Islam is pressing southwards and the danger of misunderstandings and conflicts between different religious and ethnic groups are present. The presence of the Divine Word Missionaries has been an instrument of dialogue and bridge-building among the various groups.

Heinz Kulüke: Currently the Superior General of the Divine Word Missionaries; before he was a Professor of Philosophy and a garbage hunter, together with the marginalized children of Cebu, in the southern part of the Philippines.

Catacombs, a hidden treasure of faith