“If you think climate change is bad, you’re not prepared to live in this world at all,” said Fr Pedro Walpole SJ in an interview recently, pointing out that climate change is but one of nine factors that can push the earth out of circulation. The other eight are ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, land-system change, biogeochemical flows, stratospheric ozone depletion, freshwater use, atmospheric aerosol loading and chemical pollution.
Two Australian Jesuits have composed a hymn about the first companions in Venice, an important image in the deliberations of General Congregation 36 and one that runs through Decree 1 (nn.4, 6, 7, 39).
As Fr General Arturo Sosa SJ has said in reflecting on the General Congregation, it is an image that “conveys beautifully” the reality that “life and mission are inseparable for those who choose to follow Jesus Christ in the Society of Jesus in the service of the Church”.
The Vietnam Jesuit Province has five new priests. Fr Peter Tran Vinh Danh SJ, Fr Thomas Aquinas Nguyen Khanh Duy SJ, Fr Joseph Nguyen Hai Dang SJ, Fr Augustine Nguyen Thai Hiep SJ and Fr Anthony Nguyen Huu Khanh SJ were ordained by Bishop Joseph Dinh Duc Dao, Prelate of Xuan Loc Diocese, on August 24 in Ho Chi Minh City.
“United to be dispersed” (Jesuit Constitutions, no 655). This was what characterised the recent Vietnam Jesuit Province assembly, held to gain a deeper understanding of the decrees of General Congregation 36 and how they can be applied in the life and mission of the Jesuits in Vietnam. They came together before rowing into the deep of their ministries.
Australian Jesuit Provincial Fr Brian McCoy has announced a project to bring together the Jesuits’ concerns for Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers, which he describes as “the bookends of rejection” in Australian history.
The first bookend, Fr McCoy said, is the arrival of the First Fleet of convicts and military from Britain in what is now Sydney in 1788.
Once a year, the lilt of the t’rung and the rise and fall of the sounds of the danbau transport audiences at a charity concert in Tokyo to the mountain regions of Vietnam. The performers are Vietnamese migrant workers in Japan, and this year’s concert featured a choir called “Cecilia”, that usually serves at the Vietnamese Sunday masses at St Ignatius Church next to the Jesuit Tokyo Social Center.
When Sana Mariam from Pakistan encountered the indigenous Aeta communities living in the mountain range of Central Luzon in the Philippines, these words from Genesis came to her mind, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”
The Jesuits have begun working on the cause for the beatification of a Filipino Jesuit Scholastic, Richard “Richie” Fernando SJ, who died saving several people from a grenade blast in Cambodia in 1996.
In a letter to the Province on July 31, the Feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, Philippine Provincial Fr Antonio Moreno SJ announced that Fr Arturo Sosa SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, had endorsed his proposal to formally initiate the cause of Richie Fernando.
On November 1, 2016, Kang Han began her secondary education in Xavier Jesuit School in Cambodia. The 12-year-old girl is a scholarship student and one of the 34 students in the new school’s first Grade 7 class.
For the last year, Magis Indonesia has been helping to prepare volunteers for the 7th Asian Youth Day. With Asian Youth Day taking place from July 31 to August 6, the volunteers are now in the thick of things, doing their part to ensure that the more than 2,000 youth from all over Asia leave Indonesia prepared to leave a mark on the world.