| Holland – The Rector Major opens a new Salesian community in Amsterdam |
| RMG – The Rector Major meets the new missionaries |
Fr Harrie Kanters, a Salesian in the Amsterdam community, was model and a guide for many Dutch young people. With great enthusiasm and a deep confidence in the younger generations, in the last 15 years he founded and directed various youth associations and organisation for voluntary service – “Samen”, “DB Jonathan”, “Jongeren Op Doortocht”, “Leefgroep” and “Drugs Pastorate” – through which he offered to well-off young people a way of life which was not limited exclusively to a materialistic view.
“Samen”, for example, is an organisation of volunteers who look after street children. The members of the association work mainly in education and after having been properly trained to deal with disadvantaged children and youngsters, they leave as missionaries for every part of the world: Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and India are some of the countries they have already been to.
Fr Kanters got the encouragement for his mission from his great love for Don Bosco. In fact he used to say that “Don Bosco was so close to the young that even today many youngsters come to me thanks to him, just his name”. Fr Kanters’ whole mission is summed up in his motto, typical of the Salesian charism: “Being a bearer of the love of God for the young”.
For his commitment to “justice, peace and the emancipation of the weakest members of society” last July this Salesian missionary had received a prestigious award from the Dutch Government.
Fr Kanters died on 26 July while he was in Uganda accompanying a group of young volunteers on their mission. The service he give in as cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic a city as Amsterdam, was valuable not only for the Salesian presence but for the whole city given the shortage of priests and religious of all the Congregations in the area.
The large number of volunteers and co-workers of Fr Kanters are continuing to pursue his commitment for young street children; there is also an active foundation with the purpose of coordinating and administering the various projects led by the Salesian missionary. But it is the volunteers, fully aware of the need for a good guide in their activities who are making an appeal and praying to the whole Congregation: “We need a Salesian with us to guide the Salesian works in Amsterdam”.
Published 17/09/2010
