A group of young indigenous people from the mountains of Hsinchu in Taiwan recently took the initiative to share their customs and traditions with Indonesian, Filipino and Vietnamese domestic care workers working in their country.
The Chinese Jesuit Province has published a book to pay homage to the many Spanish missionaries who devoted their lives to serve the people of China. Entitled “Spanish Jesuits in China”, the book spans more than four centuries, from 1552 to 2014, and was conceived as a gift from the Chinese Province to the Spanish Province for the unification of the new Province of Spain in 2014.
The experience of walking through the forest helped to set the scene of the JCAP Reconciling with Creation Reflection Workshop by immersing us in nature and helping us to reflect on the interconnectedness of all things.
It meant three days with no Internet connection or cellular phone signal, but 35 people from 10 countries within the Jesuit Conference Asia Pacific (JCAP) happily gathered in a rural part of the Philippines for an ecology workshop in early June. They worked together, shared experiences, and developed 60 joint actions for strengthening networks, collaboration and communication as communities of practice.
Cardinal Charles Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, opened the 50th Anniversary Mid-Year Celebration of the East Asian Pastoral Institute (EAPI) on June 18 with affirming words recognizing EAPI’s significant role in the growth of the Church across Asia. The Cardinal, an EAPI alumnus himself, shared his testimony on the transforming impact of the institute in the lives of the participants and the life of the Church.
The environmental problems we face today are complex and the Church’s concern is shared by other faiths. In Islam, for example, we can find some principles of environmental ethics that deal with nature and creation. These principles are: tawhîd (God’s unity), âyat (sign of God’s presence), mîzân (balance), khalifat (God’s vicegerent) and amânat (trust).
The education secretaries within the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific (JCAP) met from May 30 to June 2 in Siem Reap, Cambodia to discuss, among many things, possible projects for collaboration. Guiding the discussion around how members of the Asia Pacific network of Jesuit schools can assist and support each other’s projects was the new JCAP Coordinator for Basic and Secondary Education, Fr Johnny Go SJ, who took over the role from Fr Christopher Gleeson SJ recently.
This World Refugee Day, the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) has called for everyone to embrace refugees as part of their communities by providing them with opportunities to grow and contribute to society. This means not only giving them a safe place to stay but also ensuring that they are protected from all forms of evil, including poverty, isolation, exploitation, misconception and neglect.
Often, our mission is not only the aim of our efforts, but also the instrument of our own formation. We are formed for the mission, by the mission, in the mission. At least, that was how I felt about my regency in East Timor.
A special screening of the new film on Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, was held at the Filmoteca Vaticana in Vatican City on June 14. An ambitious project by Jesuit Communications Foundation in the Philippines, Ignacio de Loyola is set to be released in cinemas in the Philippines on July 27. An international release is still being planned.