An academic in charge of a large-scale construction project? Australian Jesuit Fr Quyen Vu SJ doesn’t understand how it happened either. “Yes, I laugh about my new role sometimes. I am now immersed in building construction,” he says.
This eight-hectare site in the Kasait in Timor-Leste is being transformed into the new St Ignatius of Loyola Kasait under Fr Quyen’s watch as the vice-principal of the new Jesuit school.
Forty years after the Jesuits re-established their mission among indigenous people at Balgo, Australian Provincial Fr Steve Curtin SJ says the Jesuits’ commitment to Indigenous ministry remains strong. A letter was sent out to the Province in February to mark the anniversary, and to encourage people to continue to deepen their engagement with indigenous people.
A dream two years in the making was realised on February 11 when Redfern Jarjum College, the first Jesuit school to be established in Australia in over 60 years, opened its doors to 24 Indigenous primary-aged children.
A guidebook is now available to those who wish to experience the richness and vitality of the Catholic Church in Shanghai, a Chinese city that is rampantly commercial and surprisingly spiritual.
Just weeks short of his 100th birthday, Fr Geoffrey Schneider SJ was declared the world’s oldest teacher by Guinness World Records.
Fr Schneider, who was born on December 23, 1912, is the first Jesuit in the Australian Province’s 164-year history to reach the age of 100. He has taught in schools in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, and has spent the last 47 years at St Aloysius College in Sydney.
The Conference team is expanding and strengthening. Consultations between the President and Provincials over several months have resulted in the missioning of Jesuits from various Provinces to core positions in the Conference. This generosity of spirit will greatly help the Conference to keep the Society in Asia Pacific oriented towards the service of faith and the promotion of justice.
The appointments announced by Conference President Fr Mark Raper SJ in December are:
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.
The Christian Life Community in Australia has made giving and promoting the First Spiritual Exercises an apostolic work. For the last six years, the First Spiritual Exercises have been given in Australia and Malaysia, by Jesuit, religious and lay teams in parishes, spirituality centres and other groups.
Jesuit Social Services CEO Julie Edwards recently spoke to Catholic Health Australia about leadership in the context of a Catholic service. She addresses the elements required to enable leadership to flourish, in particular the approach to decision-making at critical moments to ensure witness to the mission remains authentic.
At the International Colloquium on Jesuit Secondary Education in Boston, Fr Danny Huang SJ, Regional Assistant for Asia Pacific, posed 10 points of reflection from the Procurates, that he said would be useful to discuss in Jesuit schools, Provinces and Regions.
1. Apostolic instruments
Do we understand ourselves and function as apostolic missions? How?