A Romanian Orthodox priest at a Catholic university"In Indonesia we are few Catholics, but with ardent faith.""We Christians in Pakistan have hope for a better future."Father Queirós Figueras was born in Angola 42 years ago. He studies Institutional Communication at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. As a child he endured the sufferings of war in his country. And as a priest, he has seen the disaster in terms of poverty and lack of development. "Unfortunately, the almost thirty years of military conflict in Angola have caused not only victims and refugees, but also losses of physical and economic capital," he says.
Like most children of his generation, he had to flee the war. "I was born in a village called Utende, in the municipality of Kibala, but I had to move with my family to the city of Luanda, where I grew up on the outskirts of the capital with my parents and siblings, being the second child of seven siblings. We had to flee because of the civil war the country was going through at the time, in 1983," he says.
The faith and support of his family helped him to fight the fear of conflict. He was ordained a priest on November 21, 2010 in the Diocese of Viana, by Monsignor Joaquim Ferreira Lopes, the first bishop of the same diocese.
The reunification of families separated by the war is one of Angola's priorities. "After the war, the Angolan governments launched a strategy to fight poverty that affected rural areas the most, as the war limited the population's access to farming areas and markets, and destroyed the resources of the peasants," says Father Queirós.
The Catholic Church, in particular through its missionaries, continues to try to assist the government in rebuilding the social fabric, in providing the population with food, education and vocational training, as well as health care in the fight against AIDS.
