(ANS – Rome) – Today, 20th February, a small team led by historian Fr Francesco Motto, SDB, left Italy for Patagonia and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, to shoot a docudrama on a historical event of interest to the Church and to the Salesians: the Centenary of the raising of a monumental cross at the southernmost tip of Patagonia, at Cape Froward, a promontory on the Straits of Magellan.

The first cross erected – composed of two iron beams of 12 metres, of which the vertical three metre beam was in rocky ground – had been commissioned and inaugurated on December 21, 1913 by the Salesian from Uruguay, Fr Luigi Ettore Salaberry, Rector of the San José institute, Punta Arenas (Pro-vicar and then Ecclesiastical Governor of the same city) in commemoration of the 16th Centenary of the edict of Constantine the Great of 313 which granted religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire after the victory over Maxentius, following the dream of the Holy Cross and the vision "in hoc signo vinces".

Given that Cape Froward is the furthest extension of the Church to whom Jesus entrusted the mandate to preach His word to the ends of the Earth, the Salesians with the legitimate pioneer pride wrote the words of Psalm 71 on it in Latin: "He will rule from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth".

In 1943 Fr Salaberry blessed a second cross, this one in reinforced concrete, to replace the previous one, which was partially ruined over time. Even this, however, was later replaced in April 1987 with a metal cross, a tubular structure 50 metres high, to celebrate the apostolic journey of Pope John Paul II to Chile.

"The docudrama will also be the opportunity to document the heroic, albeit ill-fated Salesian activity amongst the Indians in Patagonia and the Tierra del Fuego Islands with historical rigour” Fr Motto explains, “the same islands which Charles Darwin, the British naturalist, known for having formulated the theory of the ‘evolution of species’ had visited a few decades before with different intent".

The film will focus on a dual theme: the Salesian missionary and Darwinian science. Fr Motto hopes to be able to present a preview next December in Punta Arenas, Chile, and Turin, from where the dream of the Salesian presence in the Southern Hemisphere departed, to finally reach Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego) and even further South, the uninhabited island of Cape Horn.

Published 20/02/2013