Familia Comboniana 759 – January 2018

GENERAL ADMINISTRATION

CONSULTA DECEMBER 2017

1. General Economate
   1. Bro. Marco Binaghi has been appointed Bursar of the Curia Community as from 1 January 2018.
   2. Bro. Marco Binaghi has also been appointed a member of the General Economate as from 1 January 2018.
   3. The GC wishes to thank the NAP Province for their great generosity towards the General Administration and especially to the General funds for sick confreres and the Formation-Education Fund.
   4. The GC also wishes to thank the circumscriptions of Asia, Central Africa, Colombia, DSP, Ecuador, EGSD, Ethiopia, Italy, Kenya, the London Province, Mexico, the NAP, Portugal, Spain, South Sudan and Chad who have sent in their contributions to the GA.
   5. The GC has suggested that the General Economate should deeply reflect upon solidarity between the various circumscriptions and also with the local Churches. The GC hopes that this reflection may involve all the circumscriptions so that their superiors may bring its results to the Inter-capitular Assembly.
2. Year for Revisiting and Revision of the Rule of Life
   1. The GC reminds us that, with regard to implementing the 2015 Chapter Acts, it was decided to dedicate the year 2018 to revisiting the Rule of Life. With its letter, the GC encourages both circumscriptions and individual confreres to commit themselves seriously to this work.
   2. The GC informs us that will be offered “reflection inserts” prepared by the General Administration and other confreres chosen from the continents and sub-continents. These inserts will be published in Familia Comboniana and will assist personal and communitarian reflection in all circumscriptions.
3. General Administration Directory

Following the revision carried out by Fr. Lorenzo Frattini and having consulted a Canon Lawyer of the Holy See, the GC approved the corrections made to that part of the Directory of the GC which deals with “The Administrative Management of the particular situations of confreres”. An insert of this part of the Directory will be made and distributed to circumscription superiors so as to facilitate their service to confreres living in particular situations. The GC wishes to thank the confreres who collaborated to produce this part of the Directory. The first part of the GA Directory will be produced and approved in due course.

4. General Secretariats: statutes and councils

The GC has approved ad experimentum up to 2020 the statutes of the three General Secretariats (Formation, Mission and Economy) and has appointed the members of the three enlarged secretariats:

1. Formation: Fr. John Baptist Opargiw, Fr. Siro Stocchetti, Fr. Fermo Bernasconi, Bro. Guillermo Casas, Fr. Elias Sindjalim, Fr. Jude Burgers, Fr. Fidèle Katsan, Bro. Alberto Parise, Fr. Pablo Rodrigo Reveles Vázquez and Fr. Rogelio Bustos Juárez (liaison).
2. Mission: Fr. Mariano Tibaldo, Fr. Arlindo Pinto, Fr. Martin Devenish, Fr. Dario Bossi, Fr. Richard Kyankaaga, Fr. Victor Kouande, Bro. Alberto Lamana (liaison).
3. Economy: Fr. Claudio Lurati, Bro. João da Silva Ferreira, Bro. Guillermo Casas, Bro. Giuseppe Lagattolla, Bro. Marco Binaghi, Fr. Manuel Ferreira Horta, Fr. Fabio Carlo Baldan, Fr. Vítor Manuel Beco Anciães, Fr. Paolo Latorre, Fr. Sebastian Chmiel, Fr. Gonzalo Antonio Dasilva Fernández, Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla (liaison).

5. Intercapitular Assembly

On 1 January 2018 the GC sent to all circumscription superiors the letter convoking the Intercapitular Assembly to be held from 9 to 30 September 2018.

6. Continental Reference Brother

Europe, APDESAM and Francophone Africa have already elected their Continental Reference Brother who will take part in the Assembly of Provincials as requested by No. 71 of the Chapter Acts. We are still waiting for America/Asia to conclude the election process. When this is complete, the GC will communicate the results to all in one of the general notes.

7. Celebrations for the 150^th Anniversary of the Institute

The GC wishes to thank the circumscription superiors, the members of the ad hoc committee and all who worked to prepare and carry out the various activities for the celebration of the 150^th Anniversary of the Foundation of our Institute. The various celebrations helped us to come to know better the gift of the missionary vocation of so many missionaries who continue the work initiated by our Father and Founder, St. Daniel Comboni.

The GC also thanks the various confreres responsible for the translation, publication and distribution of the book written by Fr. Manuel Augusto Lopes Ferreira. This provided us with a picture of our missionary Family. The GC wishes that this material be used to come to know the way God continues to manifest himself through our service to the Church and the world.

8. Mixed Institute Commission

In April 2017 the Union of Superiors General (USG) sent a letter to the Pope requesting that the Brothers have access to all the structures of government of their Institutes. A USG commission has studied the question and proposes that the relative Dicastery be authorised to accord this privilege to the clerical religious institutes on request. By so doing, the canonical complications of this complex question would be avoided. The GC considers it opportune to await the reply of the Vatican to this request before creating the commission (CA 2015 No. 53).

9. Consulta Calendar for 2018

02 - 24 March

02 - 03 (FC) 4 - 27 June

03 - 05 September

09 - 30 September Intercapitular Assembly

08 - 31 October

12 - 20 November

10. Visits by members of the CG

Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse Gebresilasie

28 December – 21 January: visit to the province of Togo with Fr. Ciuciulla

Fr. Jeremias dos Santos Martins

21 December – 3 January: in Portugal

18 January – 28 February: visits to Uganda and Kenya

Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla

28 December – 21 January: visit to the prov. of Togo with Fr. Tesfaye

01 – 15 February: Assembly in Congo

19 – 26 February:       meeting of circumscriptions in Nairobi

Fr. Rogelio Bustos Juárez

20 December – 11 January:  in Mexico

12 – 30 January: visit to the province of Central America

Bro. Alberto Lamana Cónsola

16 – 21 December: in Spain

02 – 20 January: visit to South Sudan

20 January – 17 February: visit to Uganda with Fr. Jeremias

Rome, 15 December 2017

“Expound to me the way of your statutes, Lord, and I will always respect them. Explain to me how to respect your Law and how to observe it wholeheartedly” (Psalm 119, 33-34)

Dear Confreres, Greetings in Our Lord Jesus Christ.

As we begin the New Year of 2018, dedicated to revisiting and revising the RL, we turn to each one of you to encourage you to enter into this process with a spirit that is free and open to God’s surprises. We believe that this process, inspired by the Holy Spirit through the Chapter event (“revisiting and revising the Rule of Life”, CA 2015, 49) is a time of grace that is being offered to us. All of us are asked to put our whole heart and our missionary passion into it, with a deep sense of belonging to our Comboni Institute. Among the many initiatives for the process of revisiting the Rule of Life, we shall have animation and reflection at Institute level, with the preparation of material that we shall share with the entire Institute through Familia Comboniana. The first “insert” in Familia will be prepared by the General Council and the remaining five “inserts” will come from various confreres in the continents or sub-continents. With our eyes fixed on Jesus, accompanied by our Founder and Father, St. Daniel Comboni, and while incarnated in the missionary situations in which we live and work, we feel it is our duty to mention three crucial points for this process that we are undertaking together.

First and foremost, we wish to say that, present in the foundation and the beginnings of our consecrated missionary life is the person of Jesus whose Heart hears the cry of the people, the cry of the poor and of all who thirst for justice and peace, and wants us all to be his missionary disciples.

Secondly, we wish to keep before us the living figure of our Founder Daniel Comboni. The increased understanding of his person in recent years, his canonisation and the relevance of his charism for the world, are one more invitation to keep him as our reference point, to know him better and to share his charism and his holiness with the people among whom we live and work.

Lastly, a further important aspect of this process is to be attentive to the signs of the Spirit present in the world, within the Church and the Institute. The situation in which we live the mission is the “theological locus”, the revelation of God for us today. We commit ourselves to being careful “not to let ourselves be deceived”, but to be vigilant so that, when the Lord comes, he may find us at our place like servants awaiting his coming.

May the Lord Jesus and our Founder assist us to live with confidence and joy this process that we are starting as brothers from many different cultures and races but all carved from the same rock, Comboni and his charism. (The General Council)

Perpetual Professions

Bro. Yata Blawo Lik. Christophe (T) Lomé-Cacaveli (TG)  03.12.2017

Sc. Esseh Kossi Michel (T)            Donomanga(TCH)       17.12.2017

Fr. Italo Scoccia (M)                       Chitima (MO)               10.12.2017

Holy redeemer Guild

January                   01 – 15 A                         16 – 31 BR

February                 01 – 15 C                         16 – 28 EGSD

Prayer Intentions

January – That we may learn to care for what God has created by taking part in authentic natural and human ecology, overcoming the economic, social and environmental crisis that endangers the planet and all humanity today. Lord hear us.

February – That our new encounter with the Rule of Life may reawaken in all Combonis that zeal for evangelisation which inspired our Founder. Lord hear us.

Publications

Juan Benjumea Ramos, De los toros a la misión, Editorial Mundo Negro 2017. A biography recounting the story of a life that may be divided, as the author himself says in the introduction, into two distinct periods: the first tells of Juan the bullfighter, and the second tells of Juan the Comboni missionary, first as a Brother and then, at the age of 51 years, as a priest.

ITALIA

Fr. Albanese receives the Franco Cuomo International Award

Fr. Giulio Albanese, director of Popoli e Missione and other Catholic publications, on 1 December in Rome, received the prestigious ‘Franco Cuomo International Award’, named after the writer, journalist and dramatist Franco Cuomo who died in 2007.

This award comprises four sections (Literature, Journalism and Non-fiction, Theatre and Art) and has as its object to award those forms of cultural, artistic and human expression that see the future through dialogue and encounter, appreciating past experiences and the differences between people and world visions. As we are aware, Fr. Giulio Albanese, as he has also done in his more recent writings, writes of the Africa of the past to speak of Africa of the present, seeking to find ways to build up the future.

PM Exhibition on its 90^th Anniversary

Following the success of the exhibition held from 10 October to 4 November 2017 at the Civic Library of Verona entitled “’Africa is 90!” that showed the African continent through the illustrations and cartoons from the ninety years of Piccolo Missionario publications, the same exhibition is being displayed at the African Museum from 12 December to 21 January. It is hoped that this will be an occasion to make the magazine known and to receive subscriptions to it.

Magic and medicine

From 2 February to 11 March, the African Museum will host a photographic exhibition on the theme of magic and medicine, sickness, grace and healing in Africa.

The more than fifty artistic photos are by Massimiliano Troiani. A catalogue/book edited by Effata will be available at the special price of €15.00.

Film on “Travellers and Migrants”

This year, the section of the “Travellers&Migrants” films from the African Film Festival will be shown in our Africa Hall each second Friday from January to May 2018.

MOZAMBICO

Fifty years in the diocese of Beira

On 3 December, the feast of St. Francis Xavier, patron of the circumscription, at the parish of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in Alto da Manga, Beira, the Combonis celebrated fifty years of presence in the Archdiocese.

The day began with a Eucharistic celebration presided over by Archbishop Mons. Cláudio della Zuana, attended by a number of confreres, missionaries, religious, diocesan priests and the faithful. In his homily, Mons. Cláudio thanked the Combonis for their presence, especially in the prioritised fields of formation and education. At the end of the Mass, the provincial superior also thanked everyone for attending, renewing our missionary commitment and our obedience and fidelity to this local Church.

An especially beautiful part of the festivities consisted of a play prepared by the mothers who received the first Comboni Missionaries into the parish whose manner of speaking and evangelising they still remembered!

Perpetual vows

On 10 December, at the parish of St. John XXII, Chitima, Fr. Italo Scoccia made his final profession during a Mass presided over by the provincial superior Fr. Constantino Bogaio, in the presence of many confreres, religious, priests from the pastoral region of Songo and the faithful from several parishes, especially that of Santa Maria de Mucumbura.

In conclusion, the faithful thanked Fr. Italo for choosing to make his definitive consecration in the parish of Chitima which, for the first time in these fifty years, witnessed such a ceremony.

PCA

Seminar on the Rule of Life

From 4-8 December 2017, at the provincial house of the De La Salle Brothers, Guatemala City, a seminar was held on our Rule of Life, organised by the Central Commission for revisiting and revising the Rule of Life, for the American Circumscriptions.

Representatives of all the provinces and delegations of the continent took part: Bro. Simone Bauce, representing Ecuador, Fr. Luis Alfredo Pulido (Colombia), Fr. Pasquale Miniero (Guatemala, facilitator), Fr. Víctor Hugo Castillo (Provincial of the PCA, Central Commission), Fr. Damián Bruyel (PCA), Fr. Gabriel Martínez (Mexico, Central Commission), Fr. Alfredo del Toro (PCA), Fr. Carlos Humberto Rodríguez (PCA), Fr. Francisco José Martin (Provincial of Peru), Fr. Massimo Ramundo (Brasil), Fr. Romeo Barrios (Ecuador), Bro. Humberto da Silva Rua (PCA), Fr. Jorge Elias Ochoa (NAP), Fr. Tomás Herreros (Perù).

Let us pray for our beloved dead

THE FATHER: Manuel, of Bro. António Manuel Nunes Ferreira (SS).

THE BROTHER: Sandro, of Fr. Giuseppe Scattolin (EGSD).

THE SISTERS: Rita, of Fr. Giovanni Baccanelli (ET); Anna Maria, of Fr. Valeriano Grifoni (†).

THE COMBONI MISSIONARY SISTERS: Sr. M. Letizia Ferraresso; Sr. Nadia Germaine Minkarios Greiss.