Pius Messongon is thirty years old and comes from Cameroon. Since July 2016 he has been living at the seminar Bidasoa International, where he is currently spending confinement together with a hundred students from different countries of the world. He claims to be happy, despite the circumstances, to be able to accompany the Spanish people with his prayers. He trusts in God's mercy and prays for all those who have been infected with the coronavirus and their families. Pius is one of the students being trained at the University of Navarra thanks to financial aid of the CARF Foundation: "The benefactors know that with Jesus we are on the best path, I am very grateful to them".

He faces with enthusiasm his last semester in Pamplona: he receives teaching from the distance University and is sample very grateful for the effort that teachers make to teach the different subjects now that the coronavirus forces students to stay at home. "They really encourage us to keep going," he assures.

When the bishop of his diocese offered him the opportunity to study at the University of Navarra, he only wondered how it could be that out of the 80 seminarians who were part of his class, he had been chosen. However, with time he affirms with certainty that "it is the will of the Lord". He corroborates this when he explains that he was twice excluded from the provincial seminar of Philosophy of Otélé, in Cameroon, because he did not have the necessary resources to pay for his programs of study, nor for his stay there, 180 kilometers from his home. However, on both occasions he managed to obtain financing, once through the financial aid of a university professor known to the nuns of his parish, where he had been trained since he was a child; and the second time he prayed a novena to the Holy Spirit and through the parish priest of a church where he had been in summer, he was able to continue his programs of study.

The finding of his vocation dates back to the year 2000, after receiving his First Communion, when he joined the group of altar boys in his parish, although at the age of four he once said at high school that he wanted to be a priest. It was during a class talking about the professions that each child wanted to exercise when he grew up.

As a teenager, he began his discernment in a vocational group directed by the Daughters of Jesus Kermaria, within his parish. When he finished the high school and had to decide about his future, he says that to be sure he made a paper with pros and cons about being a priest or not: "I thought, if God has given me life, why shouldn't I give him mine?

Once the decision was made, he told his parents and friends. Pius recounts the conversation he had with one of them: "Our friendship complements each other very well, you are going to be a doctor of the body and I am going to be a doctor of the soul," he told him. And to this day, thanks to new technologies, they remain close despite the distance.

For Pius, one of his greatest dreams would be to live the priesthood in a parish, close to the people and "share with them the joy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ". He is aware of the economic need of many families in Cameroon (about 40% of them are Catholic), so he recalls the work that priests do to help young people to be formed in the faith: "Many do not have resources and if they are not financial aid they become thieves tomorrow".