José Gabriel Silva Kafa (23 years old) was born in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where families struggle as best they can. A young Brazilian who was born into a family coherent with his Catholic faith, who lived the closeness of a living parish, and who in a slow process learned to listen to God in the midst of the noise of everyday life.
At present, José Gabriel is studying third year of Theology at the Ecclesiastical Faculties of the University of Navarra, and is receiving an integral formation in the Bidasoa international seminar, in Pamplona, thanks to the CARF Foundation. The purpose of Bidasoa is “the vocational accompaniment of future priests”, offering help to correspond to the call, and the preparation to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders.
The evangelizing mission, according to José Gabriel Silva Kafa, consists of “living in a way that makes credible what is preached,” he said in an interview granted to CARF Foundation. The Brazilian seminarian does not refer to moral exploits, but to coherence: a dedicated life that is visible in daily gestures. The simplicity of evangelizing by example without seeking to apply marketing techniques.
Coherence and faith life in your family
He learned coherence in his family. At home, faith was not explained: it was lived. His father, a commerce worker, and his mother, a graduate in administration but dedicated to the home, transmitted religion and faith naturally without pretension or fuss.
They were not and did not consider themselves a model family. Simply believing in God and faith was part of daily life. It was this stable environment that allowed Joseph Gabriel to take God seriously without the need for dramatic events.
Parish, soccer, diocesan meetings
At the age of 14, young José Gabriel began to work as an altar boy in the parish. The daily contact with his parish priest and the altar were the environment and the place where he began to realize that the priestly vocation was not something abstract.
Her days as a teenager moved, therefore, between the parish, soccer - being from Rio de Janeiro it is difficult to avoid this sport - and the diocesan meetings: activities that she remembers as the space where she discovered that faith could be a concrete way of being in the world.
In the course to receive the sacrament of Confirmation he met young people who were seeking God without complexes. This allowed him to ask himself what he wanted to do with his own life. At the age of eighteen, after beginning his studies in philosophy, he entered the seminary.
Archdiocese of Rio: close pastoral style
The archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro, one of the largest in the country, has about 750 priests in 298 parishes. Of the more than six million inhabitants, 43.6 % declare themselves Catholic. For years, the number of agnostics has been growing, living side by side with Protestants, Umbanda spiritualists, Candomblé syncretists...
According to the Brazilian seminarian, evangelizing in Brazil means speaking of God to a population that distrusts, also in the affective area. “Many do not believe in love, because they have seen how it breaks,” he explains. That is why he admires the work of his archbishop, present in very different neighborhoods and communities. A pastoral style - close, constant, without artifice - is the model on which he himself looks to learn and improve as a future servant of God.
In his opinion, the trivialization of love and family fragility have left deep wounds in many young people. For this reason, he insists that the Christian proclamation can only be understood if it shows a love that is stable and capable of rebuilding.
The priest required by the Church
José Gabriel discovered in Spain another way of living the faith. He values the beauty of the liturgy and the intellectual seriousness of the environment in which he now finds himself, but he perceives less community involvement than in Brazil. “Here everything is well cared for and well celebrated, but sometimes the closeness that moves us to participate and serve is missing,” he said.
When asked about the priest the Church needs today, he answers clearly: “Someone who truly loves his vocation, who studies seriously and who prays without negotiating. In a secularized context, people quickly distinguish if a priest believes what he says or if he only fulfills his role”, affirms José Gabriel Silva Kafa.
Today, this seminarian, far from his country, continues to strengthen his vocation in a seminary that, as he acknowledges, is also molding him. A vocation can grow in silence and become more solid with the passage of time.
Letter of Pope Leo XIV
It is hard not to think of Joseph Gabriel, and seminarians like him, when reading what Pope Leo XIV has just written in the month of December. The Apostolic letter “A fidelity that generates future”, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the decrees of the Second Vatican Council ‘Optatam totius’ and ‘Presbyterorum ordinis’.
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