This year’s Asia Pacific Theological Encounter Programme (APTEP) had a cohort of Jesuit scholastics from the Loyola School of Theology in Manila, diocesan seminarians from the Philippines and Indonesian sisters from the Congregation of Divine Providence.
People in Indonesia have been flocking to cinemas across the country to see SOEGIJA, the film based on the life of Monsignor Albertus Magnus Soegijapranata SJ, the first local Catholic bishop in Indonesia. The film is produced by Jesuit work, Studio Audio Visual (SAV) Puskat.
“You are not forgotten,” said Aung San Suu Kyi. “Pass this message to those behind you and on to others.” Not permitted a microphone, the Burmese pro-democracy leader called out to the crowd of refugees and migrants at the border refugee encampment of Mae La in May on her first visit abroad in 24 years. Her clear message of hope quickly reached the hundreds of thousands of Myanmar citizens, who had waited decades in squalid jungle camps along the length of the 1,300 km Thai-Myanmar border.
A Theological Cooperation Working Group has been formed to review Jesuit theological formation in Asia Pacific and develop realistic ideas to upgrade the quality of theology taught to scholastics in this part of the world.
The group of 12 Jesuits actively involved in theological formation met with JCAP President Fr Mark Raper SJ from April 17 to 19, and will henceforth meet once a year. It was agreed that members are to be specifically delegated by their major superior and are expected to be deans of theological schools empowered to take and implement decisions.
The Society is now at a new stage brought about by a couple of converging factors – the demographic realities and how we can best serve the universal mission today.
Our numbers have been in decline for the last 40 years – from over 30,000 in the 1960s to fewer than 18,000 today. The steep declines in Europe and North America and consistent decline in Latin America have not been offset by the significant increase in South Asia and a small rise in Africa.
Since 2009, Myanmar scholastics have been sent to Indonesia for their formation. The first group of Myanmarese scholastics arrived in the country in May 2009. The six – Cyril Nay Myo Htet, Lawrence Khu, Joseph Zaw Goan, Paul Tu Ja, Marcus Min Htun, Pius Than Naing Lin – are in the Philosophy stage of formation, in the third year of a four-year Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy course at the Driyarkara Higher School of Philosophy in Jakarta.
The 10 tertians in the Asia Pacific Tertianship completed their six-month tertianship in early March. One of them, Fr John Sullivan SJ, contributed this reflection on the experience.
How do we promote reconciliation with creation to our fellow Jesuits in Asia Pacific? With imaginative and powerful images as the members of the Scholastics and Brothers Circle showed in the innovative campaign materials they developed during a workshop on Effective Communications held from December 19 to 30, 2011.
Catholics should be using cinema and culture to dialogue with other faiths, and we should be doing so in the market place, said President of SIGNIS World Augustine Loorthusamy in his keynote address at the SIGNIS Asia Assembly in Nepal in October.
The second Asia Pacific Theological Encounter Programme (APTEP) will be held from April 10 to May 8, 2012. Conducted by the Indonesian Jesuits, the one-month programme on “Dialogue with Muslims” was first held in 2011. It was born from the positive successful immersion programme conducted in 2009 with 18 Indonesian Jesuit scholastics living in an Islamic boarding school (pesantren) for two weeks.