Jesuit Communications Foundation in Manila, in collaboration with the EAPI and JESCOMEAO, conducted an annual one-month Pastoral Communications Workshop for participants coming throughout Asia from May 14 to June 13. Mr. Augustine Loorthusamy (SIGNIS World President, JESCOMEAO Special Assistant) and Fr Jerry Martinson launched this year’s workshop which drew a record number of over 40 participants.
Fr. Richard Leonard (ASL), Director of the Australian Catholic Film Office and the Catholic Church Television, came to Hong Kong on November 12-18 and conducted a one-week program on Mass Media and Ignatian Spirituality.
On June 23, Fr Jerry Martinson (CHN) wrote: Many interesting projects here these days. Yesterday, I videotaped the first four episodes of a new TV series on some very moving stories of handicapped people in Taiwan. Next week, we test fly our communications course for Shenyang Major Seminary professors in China. Say a prayer for this one. The government authorities are being difficult lately. Our Adam Schall production is delayed a bit, but the script is getting better and better.
The KPS community in Taipei is graced with the presence of Bob Ronald. Bob, after having worked as rehabilitator for more than thirty years, and having founded in Taiwan the association Deshandicap, has converted himself into a prolific and inspired spiritual writer: He is not your typical apologist though… His experience with handicap, his love of fables, poems and short stories, his own literary inventiveness, and his down-to-earth, malicious wisdom, all of this has led to his “alternative” achievement in the field of spiritual writing.
Last March 24, Studio Audio Visual Puskat Yogyakarta launched a new film entitled Bethlehem Van Java. The file runs for 63 minutes and is about the history of Catholicism in Java, Indonesia (1896-1926). The writer and director of the film is a young Jesuit and staff at Puskat, Fr Murti Hadi.
“Be the first to think! Be the first to act!” This is the motto of the website developed by the Jesuit Chinese-language monthly Renlai (sponsored by the Taipei Ricci Institute) which is now on line: www.erenlai.com.
The organizers of the 12th Shanghai International Film and TV Festival gave high praise to the TV documentary Paul Xu Guangqi-China’s Man for All Seasons, which was co-produced by Taipei’s Kuangchi Program Service (KPS) and Nanjing’s Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation (JBC).
The participants of JESCOMEAO MEETING have been arriving in Manila and they are accomodated in different houses in the Ateneo compound. Fr. Thomas Rochford, the Secretary of Communication in the Curia Rome has also arrived. The meeting will start on Tuesday morning, September 6, 2005, will end on Thursday evening. They want to find ways how to effectively use the media for achieving the goals of the mission of the Society in our todays world.