Seoul - Fifty years ago in Italy when you wanted to summarize a dilapidated region we used to say ‘its a Korea’.  Today South Korea at all levels is among the most developed nations of the Far East. The energy which allowed the then unimaginable "economic and democratic miracle” is not so much the product of external aid so much as the result of the spiritual and cultural potential of its people. Park Jung-hee (1917-79) knew this well, who despite having ruled with a dictatorial heavy hand for about twenty years, loved the nation, and was honest and politically farsighted: for him culture and education, side by side, were the main pillars of reconstruction. The people are grateful to him for this. However, what is little known is the indirect but no less significant contribution of missionaries. An interview with Adriana Bricchi an Italian nun, a missionary in Korea for fifty years, has revealed as much.

Spontaneity of a unique vocation

Adriana does not want to talk about her. "I do not want to steal the glory to the Lord," she would tell me whenever I tried to express some admiration. But without precise biographical references we would not be able to appreciate what she has become: an icon of a faith that generates culture. If the philosopher Benedetto Croce had met this Salesian sister, he would have been very careful not to define the theology "words that relate to things the existence of which is unknown”. The life of our mission is anything but "a thing not known to exist" rather, God rest the Italian philosopher, it can only be expressed in theological terms. Adriana was 17 years old when, during a moment of prayer she felt a strongly inspired to devote her whole life to the religious ideal. Catholics call this kind of experience "vocation", ie a calling.

"That experience - says the missionary – was not a generic religious inspiration, but an open invitation from a living Person: the Lord. Not that I was indifferent to marriage. The happy environment of my family was the image of my future. But I responded to the divine proposal, free and strong, with joy. "

Looking back at the events that followed, but without change of direction, she has been led to believe that this experience was the very core of her life as a missionary nun.

Don Bosco and Korea.

Let us say a missionary post factum, because Adriana only become a religious sister to follow the Bridegroom. She never thought of foreign missions.  But Providence, we say, led her to this path. His parents, though not affluent, chose for her and her sisters not a state school but a school run by the Salesians, the female branch of the religious order founded in the nineteenth century by a priest in Turin (Italy), Giovanni Bosco, who was a genius as well as a saint. He devoted himself to spiritual, cultural and professional education of young people integration, a charisma which, thanks to the two institutions that were born at his initiative,  has spread worldwide, and with it, we dare say, even the influence of Italian culture. On the pediment over the entrance to the building complex of the Salesian sisters in Seoul, under the title written in Korean,  there is also written in Italian, " Istituto delle Figlie di Maria Ausiliatrice” [Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians]. In Salesian convents English is not the main spoken language but Italian. Given the long period of intellectual and moral formation in Salesian schools, the religious order Adriana chose could only have been one: the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.

The shock of Korea

In 1959 the young nun was assigned to mission in Korea. The shock of parents and family was great. "But must they send you to Korea " they said. Adriana, however, recalling the religious experience of 10 years before, responded with interior humour, repeating to herself that a typical saying of the Lombardy: "I reached 30, I might as well make it to 31". In 1957 the Salesian Sisters in Japan, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their stay in the country of the Rising Sun, had decided to open a mission in Korea, the result of requests from some bishops, sending a group of religious sisters as a vanguard. Sister Adriana with four other Italian nuns reached them in December 1959. The fratricidal Korean War (1950-53) had decimated the population (two million dead) of the peninsula and destroyed infrastructure. "In Seoul - Adriana recalls - there were only four buildings worthy of the name: the railway station, city hall, bank and Catholic hospital. The rest was just a jumble of huts with thatched roofs and sheet metal, the mighty Han River, then without banks, swept them away periodically”.

Thanks to the farsighted policy of Park Jung-hee that city has become an efficient and orderly metropolis of over 11 million people, the neighbourhoods south of the river have majestic gardens and the roads are the envy at the same Tokyo. But on those streets tens of thousands of women have worked. In this context, the Salesian sisters, well received by the government for their educational work have worked hard to instil courage in mothers and to give an education to children.

The work of entertainment spread throughout the nation

In 2007 the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian) celebrated the 50th anniversary of their presence in Korea. Adriana on that occasion must have felt peace and even satisfaction. The suffering of the initial community was not in vain. They became the "overseers" of 240 Korean sisters distributed throughout 28 centres in major cities. Their centre in Seoul is particularly expressive of their identity: a complex of four "houses" that, apart from the residence of the sisters are all used for the education of women who have had no education. It is a "cultural center" in which free education is offered to 240 mothers; a psychology clinic to help  mothers, a playground for children who have no place in state kindergartens. Currently there are no more women working the streets, but in the last decade two other categories of excluded women have emerged: the foreign immigrants who come in search of work or marital ties and refugees from the north. These, as incredible as it may seem, have not fled the north in search of a paradise in the south, but simply to avoid starvation. Proud, they do not easily accept the company of "sisters" in the south and vice versa. They Salesian sisters offer them a house and care for free.

The stage of Mongolia

Sister Adriana, on the eve of her eightieth, can not go into "retirement" because she has been asked to answer a new call: Mongolia. It became an independent nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union and has found itself in need of everything, especially education. The Holy See has asked some missionary institutes to send members there. Three years ago, the Salesian sisters in Korea during the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary (1957-2007) of their arrival on the peninsula, have decided to accept the invitation by sending some sisters to Ulaanbaatar (pictured). The difficulties they must overcome are far from minor. To help them, the Order’s superiors have dared to ask the elderly nun to put her experience, kindness and organizational skills at the service of the young "Mongol” community, for some months. So, in less than a weeks time, Sister Adriana will take off on another "mission trip" pleased to continue to generate culture through faith.