(ANS – Adigrat) – Fr Alfred Roca is a Spanish Salesian missionary, born in 1933. He is practically a celebrity in Adigrat. For twenty-eight years he has been helping the poor, not just to have a better future, but a better present.

Fr Roca wanted to go on the missions from the time he was a novice at the age of sixteen. "But they never sent me, even though I asked several times." In 1986, after holding many different positions in Spain and after the death of both parents, the then Rector Major phoned him and asked: "Were you serious about your request? If so, we would like you to go to Ethiopia. "

On 24 January 1987, after several bureaucratic difficulties, he landed in the country. He was 53 years old and arrived during the war between the communist government of Mengistu and groups fighting to overthrow him, which they did in 1991. His task was to form the Salesian seminarians in Adigrat, then a simple rural town, but he realized immediately that the needs were different. At that time Adigrat was still receiving refugees, poverty was extreme, and the people had nothing to eat. "Education and social work go hand in hand. As Salesians we cannot have a seminar just for ourselves, we have to do something for others."

So Fr Roca began a child protection programme that still exists and which at least 1,000 children have gone through in the last 25 years. "Since starting a school was too demanding and beyond our means, we decided to open a Youth Centre with free-time activities for education and leisure. We even opened a public library", he says. We also managed to find the funds to build a group of forty houses for the most vulnerable and we started a system of aid for widows, people with AIDS and single mothers.

"There is a phrase in the Gospels that says there is more joy in giving than in receiving. I am very convinced of this; being able to do a bit of good to these people gives me much more joy."

Since he arrived in Ethiopia he has held various positions: eleven years in Adigrat where he was engaged in teaching and social work, and a further eleven years in Addis Ababa, including six as Superior of the Vice-Province of Ethiopia-Eritrea".

In 2010, at the age of seventy-six, he returned to Adigrat with every intention of remaining there for as long as his body lasts. "I did not consider returning to Spain, it would cost me a lot to adapt. What would I do there? A priest of my age can celebrate Mass, confessions and do little else. If I returned, I would be a pensioner. Psychologically, I like being close to my family, but now I feel much more useful here."

Source: “Un misionero de 81 años más famoso que una estrella del rock” El País, di Lola Hierro

Published 29/09/2015