Fr Adolfo Nicolás SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, has become the new President of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG). The UISG represents the superior generals of the more than 200 male religious congregations in the world today.
If the JCAP major superiors needed a reminder of the extent of and differences in our Conference, the last two locations for our biannual meeting certainly provided that. The island Republic of Palau, population 20,600, is a vastly different locale from that of our previous assembly held last July in Macau, a part of China, population over 1.4 billion.
Three Jesuits were ordained to the order of the presbyterate and four Jesuit scholastics ordained deacons in Vietnam on December 3, 2012, the Feast of St Francis Xavier, the Patron Saint of Missions and of the Society of Jesus in Vietnam. Bishop Peter Nguyễn Văn Khảm, auxiliary bishop of the Saigon Archdiocese presided at the Holy Mass and ordination held in Epiphany Parish, Thủ Đức (Ho Chi Minh City). Four other religious were ordained deacons in the same Mass.
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”.
We know that death comes to everyone, nothing is more certain. Yet somehow, Zulo has been with us forever and why should that change? Yet death, so common, so utterly usual, normal, has come to claim him and to surprise us. Even in his diminishment these last 5 or 7 years the essential Zulo was ever present. Through years of dialysis with its obvious discomfort, he retained his inscrutable, penetrating, quizzical gaze. His face had a Mona Lisa quality. Was that a smile, a question, or a comment?
Typhoon Vicente reached Hurricane Signal 10 overhead as the half yearly Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific (JCAP) Major Superiors’ assembly continued calmly indoors in Macau’s Colégio Mateus Ricci in the last week of July. From the meeting room window, the bright umbrellas of some of Macau’s annual 30 million visitors could be seen at the Ruins of St Paul, a reminder of the 500-year Jesuit history integral to the identity of the former Portuguese colony that is now a Special Administrative Region of China.
Jesuits and collaborators working with migrants and refugees in Asia Pacific gathered in Manila recently to share insights and ideas for co-operation among the migrant ministries within the Conference.
The two-day meeting organised by the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific was held on June 30 and July 1, in conjunction with a migration conference, “Migration, Religious Experience and Mission with Migrants in Asia”, organised by the Loyola School of Theology and the Scalabrini Migration Center.