Pforzheim – The past year has been a real balancing act for our DPP confrere Fr. Rocky, because every day he has had to deal with the Italians, German parish priests and German Catholic believers. On Ash Wednesday he said Mass with a distribution of ashes in the M.E. Basilca of St. Magdalena in our tiny town of Tiefenbronn. And during the vacancy of our pastorate, there was a sympathetic Indian priest from Tamil Nadu who assisted our more than 5000 catholics on an interim basis.
Recently there was an informal meeting between Frs. Lawrence, David and Rocky; all three from Tamil Nadu, to coordinate their pastoral services in the neighboring parishes of Tiefenbronn, Neuhausen and Heimsheim. The Archidiocese of Freiburg will soon send us a new German parish priest, and Fr. Rocky will finally start his apostolate among the 120 Italian families living in the northern part of our vicariate.
The activities of our procura recently have been extremely intense, because many things have changed within the German solidarity agencies. The General Council has opened access to all Guanellian provinces. In my five years as a Guanellian fundraiser I feel that there is a great opportunity for our confreres in several missions. One expects that Manna rains from the heavens without any substantial contribution. I repeat an old saying, Help yourselves and God will help you. Holy Providence needs effort and humble action. In other words, we are not jobless. We continue to repeat and kindly ask the readers of our DPP bulletin to think about the possibility 
of obtaining donations through this providential presence of the generous Germans. Currently, we only have projects from Mexico/Amazoc, Bateké/RD Congo, and Legapzi/Philippines. Meanwhile we have formal invitations for closer cooperation with Kindermision in Ghana and Nigeria (Mrs. Diez); for Tamil Nadu in India (Missio – Mrs. Gudrun /Stephanie); and Vietnam (Archdiocese of Cologne). The new link with our similar Spanish Puentes (Bridges) has been renewed after the resignation of our dear friend Juan Bautista Aguado. We hope that Mrs. Martinez will continue our team work, and we wish her all the best and copious blessings from God! Through Juan Bautista, we have obtained many interventions in our DPP area for the Manila and Legapzi homes. We thank him for his long passionate social and solidarity work in the Guanellian mission stations.
Inge and I are planning to re-start our personal visits to Missio-Munich in March, and in April we will visit Kindermission in Aachen and the Archdiocese of Cologne for the Amazoc/Mexico and Saigon/Vietnam projects.
May the Lent season give us time to reflect on a deep, inner change to renew our burning love for the poorest who have no lobbyists protecting them.
Have pity on us, O Lord, because our sins have caused Your Death!
And at the end we will be filled with joy from the bottom of our hearts on the night of His Resurrection! He arose! Glory to You O Lord, because Jesus remains forever with us sinners!
Gero Lombardo, German Guanellian Procura
Servants of Charity 