Pedro Opeka

Padre Pedro Opeka
Pedro Opeka with children in Akamasoa
Born	29 June 1948 San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nationality	Argentina Slovenia
Occupation	Priest

Pedro Pablo Opeka (born June 29, 1948), known also as Padre Pedro or Father Pedro, is a Catholic priest from Argentina of Slovene descent, working as a missionary in Madagascar. He exemplifies a new type of missionary: not someone committed to converting and preaching, but someone fully dedicated to the poor, helping them to build their future. For his service to the poor, he was awarded the Legion of Honor.

Early life

Opeka was born in Argentina, in San Martín, a suburb of Buenos Aires, to parents of Argentine Slovene parents. His father was from Begunje near Cerknica in Inner Carniola, his mother from Velike Lašče in Lower Carniola; they emigrated to Argentina escaping from the Communist Yugoslav regime of Josip Broz Tito.

Pedro grew up in the streets of Buenos Aires. Already as a child, he worked with his father as a bricklayer. At 15, he decided to become a priest and enter the seminary of the Lazarists. At 20, he went to Ljubljana in Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia), to further his training. Two years later, he went to Madagascar where he worked as a bricklayer in the parishes of the Lazarists.

He finished his studies at the Catholic Institute of Paris. He met the Taizé Community and travelled all over Europe.

Mission in Madagascar

On 28 September 1975, Opeka was ordained priest in Buenos Aires and was nominated responsible of a rural parish in the South-East of Madagascar, Vangaindrano.

In 1989, his superiors nominated him director of a seminary in Antananarivo, the capital. But when he saw the dump from the hills of the city, he discovered people rummaging among garbage to find something to eat and sleeping in huts made of hemp propped between mountains of waste. Pedro Opeka began talking to them, to convince them that they could leave that misery and abuse. This is how Akamasoa (“good friends” in the local language) started.

Father Pedro in the rubbish dump.

Creation of Akamasoa

Opeka created a local non-governmental organization called Akamasoa to continue his work with the Malagasy people. He appointed a team of staff helping him to manage the daily activities and to provide continuous support to poor people.

Today Akamasoa sustains nearly twenty thousands people, nine thousands children, of which seven thousands go to school, namely, four thousands families. Houses have been constructed, as well as schools, clinics, and centres for training and production. Jobs have been created, thanks to the stone and gravel quarries, to the craft and embroidery workshops, to a compost centre next to the rubbish tip to divide and sort the rubbish, to the jobs in agriculture and construction (bricklayers, carpenters, cabinet makers, operators and street pavers).

Akamasoa lies about 12 km from the center of Antananarivo, on the road in the direction of Tamatave.

Awards

In 2007, Opeka was named a knight of the Legion of Honor. The award, decreed on 12 October by the President of France, recognizes his 20 years of public service of the poor in Antananarivo. This award recognizes the ongoing fight led here against poverty by this man of faith and his 412 co-workers: physicians, midwives, teachers, engineers, technicians, and social workers, all of them from Madagascar.

In 2009 Opeka received the Golden Order for Services, which is the highest national decoration of Slovenia.

External links

• Association "Friends of Padre Pedro"
• Father Pedro compared with Mother Theresa. Metro (Associated Metro Limited), London, September 25, 2009.