Comboni Media – From the 19th General Chapter to the Six-Year Plans 2023-2028

Will it be possible to arrive at a single mission paradigm? Looking at the increasing development of new communication and information technologies and the use of the Internet, what changes could we make to our traditional methods of doing missionary animation? Do we still feel the need to keep the flame of missionary animation alive according to traditional models, or do we need to find new ways?

He continues asking some more specific questions about the Six Year Plans.

Have these Plans taken into consideration the Guidelines of the 19^th General Chapter? Have the circumscriptions drawn up a communication plan, which have been approved by their superiors? Does it make sense to say that every member of the Comboni Institute must be a missionary animator?

The aim is to seek answers to these questions, looking at the reality of the Comboni circumscriptions, starting from the author’s thirty years of personal experience in the service of communication.

As can be seen in the title, this study is divided into two parts.

In the first part, all the means of communication, both internal and external, of the Comboni Institute are collected (see Table 1 attached). Today, communication, for the Comboni missionaries, says Father Arlindo, is a necessity, indeed an obligation: to know the missionary activity of yesterday and today of the Church, and therefore of the Comboni missionaries, is a right of friends, of benefactors, and of current and future confreres. Moreover, the efforts of so many confreres in this area are commendable.

Father Arlindo recalls some historical commitments – such as EMI, MISNA, Comboni Press – and observes that many Comboni missionaries make extensive use of the means of communication for the work of evangelisation and missionary animation, especially in the field of printed publications, but also with their presence on the Web.

In the second part, a comparative synopsis is made between the texts of the Chapter Acts (AC ’22, 31.6; 32 and 33) and the texts of the 2023-2028 Six-Year Plans. To analyse what elements of the 19^th General Chapter (guidelines and priorities) are present in these six-year plans, father Arlindo, as a methodology, chooses four summary indicators: Specialisations, Communication, Communication Plan and Collaboration (the results can be seen in Table 2 and Table 3).

In conclusion, Father Arlindo expresses his awareness that he has not said everything, and that it is necessary to continue to deepen many of the issues raised, through a comparison of ideas and a sharing of experiences that the Plans have not always named, in order to get to year 2028 and see one of the dreams of the 19^th General Chapter fulfilled: “We dream of a missionary style more inserted into the reality of the peoples we accompany... A missionary style that is also characterised by simpler lifestyles and structures within intercultural communities where we witness fraternity, communion, social friendship, and service to the local Churches through specific pastorals, ministerial collaboration and shared pathways.”

Attached, see full text in Italian