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.
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:
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”.
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.
Fr C Amal SJ, an Indian Jesuit missioned to Myanmar, was recently in Loikaw, the capital of Kayah state, where many of our Myanmar scholastics are from. He offers this reflection on the Church there.
Fr C Amal SJ, an Indian Jesuit missioned to Myanmar, was recently in Loikaw, the capital of Kayah state, at the request of the Bishop to accompany 102 diocesan priests in retreats. He offers two reflections on Loikaw, where many of our Myanmar scholastics are from. This first reflection is on Loikaw, the second reflection is on the Church there.
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.
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?
Seventeen Jesuit scholastics were ordained deacon in Manila on September 8. They were an international group from nine Provinces and Regions in three Conferences, Asia Pacific, South Asia and Africa. Six of the new deacons are from the Philippine Province and the other 11 from Arrupe International Residence (AIR).