Progress was on the cards last week when representatives from Jesuit universities and colleges gathered at Canisius in Sydney for the 2009 General Assembly of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in East Asia and Oceania (AJCU-EAO).
The assembly is held each year with the aim of trying to ‘better understand our shared educational mission, to dovetail our educational efforts, which often are very atomised, and to dovetail them more with the work of the Jesuit Conference of South East Asia and Oceania and the Society of Jesus’, said Fr Joel Tabora (PHI), Chairman of the AJCU-EAO . In addition, this year’s conference discussed its contribution to be made at next year’s World conference of Jesuit Presidents.
Focusing on the themeDiscerning and Acting on our Shared Jesuit Educational Mission in the Region: Moving Forward, participants discussed ways in which to increase the cohesiveness of Jesuit education in the region.
Fr Tabora acknowledged the difficulties inherent in such an endeavour. ‘Different schools from different cultures with different governing structures are still Jesuit schools’, he said. ‘And they are Jesuit insofar as they receive the mandate to pursue the Jesuit mission, which is somehow, as one of our congregations defined, the service of the faith, promotion of justice, and sensitivity to cultures and inter-religious dialogues. Now each of us is doing those in very different ways.’
Among the challenges faced by AJCU-EAO are the sharing of identity and mission, and working out how best to work with and relate to one another, particularly in fields such as service, research, migration, the environment and justice. ‘Some of these issues are huge, but as Jesuit schools we want to be somehow relevant to them.’
While the annual gatherings are essential in terms of strengthening friendships and helping to bridge diversity, Fr Tabora says the maintenance of cohesion within Jesuit institutions depends on more discussion. ‘Jesuit education is well-respected in most countries, [but] I think we have to be humble about it – we know that we have much work to do and we know that in many ways we have to improve. But that’s what such a conference is about: trying to find ways to help one another improve our service.’
Participants were drawn from the intellectual apostolate and tertiary education institutions in Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, Taiwan and Vietnam. (Contributor: Catherine Marshall)