Jesuits and Buddhist monks and nuns came together in early March to share and dialogue on ecology and religions in a workshop organised by the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific.
Organised locally by Fr Lawrence Soosai SJ of the Patna Jesuit Province, the three-day workshop was held in India, in the city of Bodhgaya where the Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment, and which is one of the holiest of Buddhist cities.
Fr Claudiu Jani Miklós SJ from the Independent Region of Romania was one of six tertians in the recently concluded 2015 to 2016 Asia Pacific Tertianship in the Philippines. Before tertianship, Fr Miklós was Spiritual Director of the Diocesan Roman Catholic High School Hám János of Satu Mare for four years. He shares with us a reflection on his tertianship experience.
The Jesuit Refugee Service in Europe has launched a new campaign entitled “Journeys of Hope”. Through it, JRS Europe aims to highlight the individual voices, hopes and dreams of people seeking a new, safe life in Europe, by recounting their personal stories and experiences.
The Apostleship of Prayer has launched an app to encourage people throughout the world to pray every day for the challenges facing humanity and the mission of the Church, as expressed by the Pope in his monthly prayer intentions.
Fr Andrew Lee Sung-gyoon SJ, the new director of Yiutsari, the Jesuit migrant centre in Korea, reflects on the death of a young Thai migrant worker in Korea and what it says about Korean society.
On February 8, sad news of the death of a young Thai worker came to me. I rushed to the hospital to meet his relatives and friends. According to them, this young man had been too weak to work and had gone to a small local hospital. Several days ago before his death, he decided to go to the general hospital and was hospitalised but he died one day later.
The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice in Dublin, Ireland has embarked on an extensive review of the needs of young adults aged 18 to under 25 in Irish prisons. This is a first for young adults in Irish prisons and is aimed at influencing policy and how the prison service responds to the specific needs of this group. Due to be published in the next couple of months the report highlights key issues and provides policy recommendations.
In his first visit to Asia, His Eminence Giuseppe Cardinal Versaldi, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, enjoined educators, theologians, and religious men and women to become credible witnesses of Church teaching, noting that sanctity is the “more convincing way” to attract others to the faith.
The Christian-Buddhist Workshop group of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific (JCAP) has produced its first book, to showcase its work over the last several years and to encourage younger people to study Buddhism. Titled The Buddha and Jesus: An anthology of articles by Jesuits engaged in Buddhist Studies and Inter-religious Dialogue, the collection of 16 essays discusses Buddhist traditions, inculturation, meditation methods, issues in Chinese Buddhism, doctrinal interpretations in early Buddhism, the spirituality of indigenous peoples and more.
Fifty years ago, the East Asian Pastoral Institute (EAPI) embarked on a new mission through the initiative of Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ, then Superior General of the Society of Jesus. After providing liturgical renewal for missionaries for more than a decade, it changed its purpose in 1966 to providing programmes for renewal and aggiornamento in the spirit of Vatican II.
As usual it began with a phone call. In the first week of February, a call came through from the staff at the halfway house run by the Ministry of Social Welfare in East Jakarta. A group of people needed some spiritual counsel. The people were Indonesian migrant workers who had been deported from Malaysia. The next day, a group of volunteers who call themselves Care for Migrants Network of the Jakarta Archdiocese visited the shelter and organised a common counseling session and a mass because most of the deportees were Catholic.