Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan (SLB), the socio-political arm of the Jesuits in the Philippines, and Ateneo de Davao University recently organized a relief and recovery programme for survivors of Typhoon Pablo, known internationally as Typhoon Bopha. Held on January 8 and 9, the relief programme, Task Force Noah: Pablo, served 1,000 affected families in Compostela Valley. The team was also able to get support from the Tribal Council of each municipality.
The torrential rain that hit the Indonesian capital and its surrounding areas for two consecutive days (January 16 and 17) caused massive flooding in Jakarta, Bekasi and Tangerang. According to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), 32 people have died and 33,502 people have been displaced.
EAPI sets up Centre for Effective Mission
The East Asian Pastoral Institute (EAPI) is setting up a new unit to provide consultancy and on-site training programmes for local churches in Asia Pacific. The new Center for Effective Mission will complement EAPI’s current formation and educational programmes in Manila, Philippines.
In September, the six Conference Presidents gathered in Rome for their annual meeting with Fr General. Although we came from very different parts of the world, we could experience much in common in our roles of service to the Society’s global mission.
In a letter to Major Superiors on the occasion of the launch of the Year of Faith, Fr General Adolfo Nicolás, superior general of the Society of Jesus, welcomed the Holy Father’s call “to focus more explicitly on the gift of faith, and the witness and service we give to it”.
In his invention at the 25th Synod of Bishops, Fr General Adolfo Nicolás, superior general of the Society of Jesus, told the Synod that “a New Evangelisation has to learn something from the First Evangelisation, from the things we did well and from the mistakes we committed as well as the insufficiencies we suffered in our desire to communicate the Gospel”.
Rectors and Formation delegates across the Conference of Asia Pacific gathered in Manila recently to discuss how to form Jesuits for the needs and contexts of the globalized, interconnected world we live in today.
A relic of St Francis Xavier has begun a three-month “Pilgrimage of Grace” in Australia. The relic is Xavier’s right forearm, which has been kept in the Church of the Gesu, the Society’s mother Church in Rome for the past 400 years.
From September 23 to 25, 2012, 340 delegates from 10 Jesuit schools converged in Zamboanga City to participate in the 2nd Jesuit Basic Education Congress and join Ateneo de Zamboanga University in celebrating its centennial year.
Fr C Amal SJ, an Indian Jesuit missioned to Myanmar, was recently in Loikaw, the capital of Kayah state, where many of our Myanmar scholastics are from. He offers this reflection on the Church there.