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Carretto and Illich In Letters from the Desert, Carlo Carretto tells of his experience in African deserts. In Italy, he had been a school teacher and an activist in Catholic Action, during and after World War II. Born in 1910, he responded to Jesus Christ and, at the age of 44, left Italy for North Africa. Inspired by Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), he became a Little Brother of Jesus, a congregation founded several years after de Foucauld’s death. Carretto was paralyzed, due to an accident. In a few words he describes what happened: “An accident in the middle of the desert paralyzed one of my legs. When the doctor arrived—eight days later—it was too late; I shall be lame for the rest of my life.” The reader can infer a lot from these words. Carretto says, “it was too late,” with no concern that he should have had medical treatment earlier, an aspect of his detachment. The pages of his book reveal who Carretto was, for example, when he speaks of Brother Paul, who left the life of an engineer working on the French atomic bomb, who chose manual work on a road crew, or his thoughts on not founding hospitals or orphanages. He desired to live before speaking, in imitation of Jesus Christ. He went to the desert to learn to pray. And he learned that this was the Sahara’s great gift to himself. He said,
He also understood something of the nature of poverty.
I could quote him over and over, for he wrote several books—but Letters from the Desert summarizes his thought. Returning to Italy in 1964, he was asked to oversee a new community, called the Fraternity of St. Jerome in Spello. The Little Brothers had established a network of hermitages where laymen could temporarily share the Fraternity’s life of prayer and reflection. After writing his books he died there in 1988 at 78. Foucauld had lived principally among Muslims. Carretto chose the same kind of life with Muslims and ex-slaves. Abdaraman, a young boy, who was a friend of Carretto, accompanied Carretto one evening. His father, Aleck, in answer to Carretto with regard to the French wasting his water — on which he depended — said, “Allah is great and will provide for my children.” Abdaraman accompanied Carretto after sunset—when the air had freshened. Carretto and Abdaraman often have tea together and “. . . he tells me how much he likes the bread I make.” That evening, he is distracted and serious and Carretto knows that Abdaraman wants to question him.
After a pause, Carretto asks the boy the reason for his crying. Abdaraman finally answers, “Brother Carlo, I am crying because you don’t become a Muslim!” Carretto attempts to say that there is only one God, shared by Muslims and Christians. Abdaraman cries, “If you don’t become a Muslim you’ll go to hell like all Christians!” A man in the village had told Abdaraman that “. . . all Christians go to hell.” Abdaraman exclaims, “And I don’t want you to go to hell.” But Carretto notes that “Charles de Foucauld, who wanted to be called the Little Brother of all men, was murdered, through ignorance and fanaticism, by sons of the same tribe as Aleck and Abdaraman.” Ivan Illich, in his Forward to an early edition of Letters to the Desert, provides a certain nuance to this statement of Carretto. While going to Tamanrasset in Algeria, he was looking for the house of the Little Brothers. Not knowing Arabic, the French words he tried found no reaction from the youngsters, who suddenly then began to shout, “Frére Carlo, Frére Carlo.” They grabbed his bag and, crossing the road, led Illich to the shoemaker’s shop. Illich realized that they had led him to Carretto. Then Carretto hobbled out of his shop and led Illich to the adobe fort in which de Foucauld had been murdered. He died because he had been asked to guard sixteen French rifles. Charles de Foucauld was born in Strasbourg on September 15, 1858 and was killed on December 1, 1916. He wanted to be a hermit among the most abandoned people. In 1904 he settled at Tamanrasset, among the Tuaregs of the Hoggar, attempting to imitate Jesus. In a letter he wrote to Abbé Caron on April 8, 1905, he wrote “. . . my vocation to lead this life of Nazareth, not in the Holy Land that I love so much, but amongst the most sick souls, the most forsaken flocks.” He then “. . . obtained permission from the Prefect Apostolic of the Sahara to settle in the Algerian Sahara, to lead there, in solitude and silence, in holy poverty with manual labor, alone, or with other priests, or lay-brothers, a life that was as closely conformed as possible to the hidden life of Jesus at Nazareth.” But de Foucauld found no disciples to imitate him. Leading Illich to the chapel of the fort, Carlo stopped in front of a tombstone erected by the French Army:
He died for France—which at that time meant empire. The meaning of the words troubled Illich. Carretto simply said, “If you want to live like Jesus you must accept being misunderstood like him.” Much is implied in these phrases. Illich writes:
Illich hopes that some readers, enjoying complete silence, will
So he ends the Forward. Lee Hoinacki |