Urban ministry in Brazil faces challenges of violence, overcrowding

Published: 2007-05-08

SAO PAULO, Brazil (CNS) -- Outside a nondescript house behind a wall on the outskirts of Brazil's largest city, a clothesline full of tiny shirts flutters in the breeze. In a cramped room inside, three small children draw diligently under the eye of a teacher, while several older children alternately play and fight as the aroma of rice and beans wafts through the first floor. These close quarters will be home for the youngsters for the next six months while their mothers try to find jobs and somewhere else to live and start to put a bitter past behind them. The seven women currently living at the shelter with their 17 children are victims of domestic violence so severe that their lives are in danger. One was shot by her husband; another lost her teeth to constant battering. "These are extreme situations, but they are a reflection of life on the periphery of Brazil (where) domestic violence mixes with urban violence," said the Rev. Haidi Jarschel, a Lutheran pastor and director of the Fala Mulher Association. The association, which in English means "speak up, woman," operates two shelters that are partly funded by local governments in metropolitan Sao Paulo. Violence and aggressiveness -- domestic, drug-related and murders over land rights -- are part of the landscape that Pope Benedict XVI will encounter when he arrives May 9.

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