September 24, 2004

BUENOS AIRES - Today Mary Jones has different names, languages and nationalities. We can find her poor and forgotten on the streets of Calcutta, thirsty for water and hope in Sudan, exposed to danger in a Sao Paulo suburb or washing car windows on an avenue in Buenos Aires, said Marcelo Figueroa.

The Secretary General of the Argentine Bible Society (SBA) was referring to Mary Jones, a young Welsh girl who worked for six years to save up enough money to buy her own Bible and then walked 40 kilometers to get it. Her efforts inspired a small group to found the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804 to disseminate the Bible.

Figueroa spoke in an act commemorating 200 years of what are now the United Bible Societies, last September 21.

Today the Bible, or parts of it have been translated into 2,355 languages of the approximately 6,000 spoken around the world. The United Bible Societies, present in more than 200 countries, distribute approximately 600 million scriptures a year.

Figueroa noted that the SBA, founded in 1825, has distributed the Bible in the indigenous Toba, Mocovm, Pilaga, Chorote, Wichm, Yagahan and Quichua languages.

The story of Mary Jones, he said, was repeated recently when Adriana and Veronica, two young Wichis, who live in the province of Formosa found out that the Bible was being distributed in Wichi and walked 15 kilometers with some artisan work, the only thing they had to offer in exchange.

Adriana and Veronica call us, challenge us and give us strength to continue forward, he said.

He said that the SBA is lobbying so that under Argentina law the fourth Sunday of September be named the National Bible Day. This proposal is supported by representatives from both the Catholic and Evangelical Churches.

During the same ceremony, Salvador Dellutri, president of the SBA, emphasized that the Bible, as the Word of God in eternity, is always integrated in time. When we began the XXI Century, he said, we were filled with hope.

However, the short road we have traveled is showing us that this optimism is unfounded: intolerance, violence, hatred, death, oppression, hunger and misery occupy front and center stage.

We are before violence of an international scale. However, the most shameful and terrible thing is that in some cases the name of Jesus Christ is used to justify "preventive wars against evil" and they attempt to disguise voracity under the label of "just war" or, worse yet, "a holy war."

However, together with the openly war-based violence there is another violence: that of misery and poverty. Selfishness, ambition and materialism dominate the world scene. Powerful transnational capital impose a neoliberal model and insist on a universal market, responding to the most unjust and unfair capitalist interest in human history, said Dellutri.

We are moving toward a future, he said, where 500 million people will live in opulence while 5.5 billion will sink in hunger and misery.

If the international panorama is not encouraging, what is happening in Argentina is also extremely serious. We live in a bankrupt nation, marked by profound social problems and frightening poverty and misery. We live in the midst of terror, faced with constant insecurity, confused by the imprecise lines between criminals and public servants, said Dellutri.

Today, theft, death and destruction seem to have overtaken our society. For this we must turn our eyes and heart to Jesus Christ, because he is the only one who can give us true life. As Argentines we must call each other to true repentance. Without this spiritual renewal that will truly change our conduct there will be no future. Today, we are surrounded by shadows that frighten us. It is time to stand before God, with our face to the sun, he concluded.

ALC News Service