If the JCAP major superiors needed a reminder of the extent of and differences in our Conference, the last two locations for our biannual meeting certainly provided that. The island Republic of Palau, population 20,600, is a vastly different locale from that of our previous assembly held last July in Macau, a part of China, population over 1.4 billion.
Jesuit scholastics and brothers from across the Conference gathered in Cambodia at the end of the year to reflect on healing a broken world. Mark Lopez SJ, Chairman of SBC 2012 Core Organising Committee, provides this report of the meeting.
The Jesuit Conference Asia Pacific (JCAP) continues to seek venues to strengthen reflection, and network through participation in formation programmes, and institutional and province reviews. In Asia Pacific, there are continuous challenges of social and environmental injustice, limited basic education for the poor, and the needed revision of values in a culture of consumerism.
Colégio de Santo Inácio de Loiolá, the new Jesuit secondary school in Timor Leste, is on track to open as scheduled on January 15, with its first batch of students in Year 7.
On December 15, 79 boys and girls were informed they were successful in their application to the school. They had undergone a three-stage selection process that began in August.
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.