Michael Bingham SJ

Why do I do it?  As a child of the now unfashionable 60s, I was inspired by the call to create new social structures that were not only fairer but were built on alternative values to be found amongst life's losers.  I recall getting off the ice-bound train one Christmas in Northern Ontario and treading softly on the snow for fear of damaging the fragile sensibilities of the native people I had come to visit.  In Canada, too, I served for a time as a chaplain in a women's prison.  Here I began to see the world from the bottom side up, and since then I have never looked at things in quite the same way as before.

It was in Latin America during the 70s that I was able to link these insights or convictions to my faith: that God, and Jesus, was on the side of the poor, that his kingdom was bound up with their destiny as agents for change in an unjust world.  Reflecting on the gospel with them in the shanty-towns of Colombia, I sensed they were enabled to make small differences to their lives and conditions and increase their sense of value and hope.