Familia Comboniana 836 - January 2025

GENERAL ADMINISTRATION

GENERAL NOTES – 32^nd general consulta (2-11 December 2024)

Dates of the Intercapitular Assembly

The General Council has set the dates of the inter-capitular assembly, which will take place in Rome, EUR House, from Sunday 7^th September, to Saturday 27^th September 2025. All circumscription superiors are asked to plan their activities for 2025 keeping this commitment in mind. Further information will follow after the next consulta.

Updates on the progress of the election of the new Superior General

During the 32^nd Consulta, on 9.12.2024, the Vicar General, with the consent of his Council, announced the voting procedure for the extra-capitular election of the Superior General. The deadline for sending the ballots to Rome has been set at 24:00 on 15.1.2025. The General Council asks all the confreres to pray that the Holy Spirit may guide the electors in their discernment and making their choice.

Disclosure of the contents of the general assembly of formation

In recent weeks, the Secretary of Formation has sent the Acts of the General Assembly of Formation (i.e., the daily minutes of the sessions) to all the superiors of the circumscriptions and to all the formators of the houses of formation of the Institute. He has also prepared a summary document for dissemination, which takes up the conclusions and priorities indicated by the assembly. The first draft has already been completed, which the Council of Formation will review and finalise in the coming days, during a telematic meeting. After this step, the document will be presented to the General Council in the extraordinary consulta of mid-January 2025 for final approval. Once approved, it will be sent to all the confreres of the Institute.

Course for the elderly

The Ongoing Formation Centre will organise the next course for the elderly from 7^th October to 7^th December 2025. In the coming months, the leaders of the permanent formation centre will send more detailed information to all the superiors of the circumscriptions and include them in Familia Comboniana.

Next consulta (extraordinary): 16, 17 and 18 January 2025.

Perpetual professions

Ordinations

Holy Redeemer Guild

January           01 – 15 A         16 – 31 BR

February          01 – 15 C         16 – 28 EGSD

Prayer intentions

January – Let us pray that, through our missionary service, we may help build up the kingdom that Jesus came to bring into the world: a kingdom of justice, love and peace. Lord hear us.

February – We pray you, Lord, that in the face of the looming and frightening threat of human trafficking, we may increasingly be, together with you, defenders of life, promoters of dignity and facilitators of freedom. Lord hear us.

Comboni liturgical calendar

FEBRUARY

Meaningful anniversaries

FEBRUARY

Publications

Jorge Naranjo Alcaide, mccj, Um sueño para Daniel. El Comboni College de Jartum, Mundo Negro, Madrid 2024. As it says in the introduction, “Comboni College is and has been an educational institution with unique characteristics in the history of Comboni Missionaries and in that of a country with an Islamic majority such as the Sudan”. In these pages, Father Naranjo follows the process of preparation, foundation and development of this “laboratory of interreligious coexistence and driving force of sustainable development”, to present the Comboni educational and evangelising work in the Sudanese Republic.

ETHIOPIA

Comboni Day 2024

From the afternoon of 17^th December to the evening of 19^th December, at the provincial headquarters in Addis Ababa, the Province celebrated ‘Comboni Day’, the annual event of ongoing formation. Twenty confreres from our eight communities participated.

The invited speakers were Mgr. Lisane-Christos Matheos, Bishop of Bahir Dar-Dessie Eparchy, Mekdem Geremew (PhD), of the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat, and Father Angelo Giorgetti, General Treasurer.

Father José da Silva Vieira opened the meeting with a reflection on the missionary Heart of Jesus, centred on paragraphs 205-216 of Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, Dilexit nos. Each participant received a copy of the encyclical “On the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ” and had two hours of personal prayer, drawing inspiration from the text. The day’s activities concluded with the celebration of Holy Mass.

The following morning, Mgr. Lisane-Christos reported on the situation in Bahir Dar-Dessie, sharing his experience as the first bishop of the new eparchy. The territory is suffering greatly from insecurity and conflict for over the past twenty months. He expressed his desire that the Ethiopian rite be used in all parishes of the eparchy and that the time of the catechumenate be reduced to six months.

The Comboni missionaries have two communities in the eparchy, among the Gumuz people: Gilgel Beles and Gublak.

In the afternoon, Mekdem presented the Ten-Year Plan of the Ethiopian Catholic Church for the period 2023-2032. The document intends to guide and coordinate the efforts of the General Secretariat, dioceses and religious congregations to strive “towards its vision and mission” and achieve sustainability through responsibility, adaptation and resilience. The implementation of the Plan is divided into three periods of three years each. The last year will be dedicated to evaluation. The Episcopal Conference is working with the government to obtain recognition as a ‘legal person’. The Eucharist concluded the day.

The third day was animated by Father Giorgetti. He first presented a very interesting reflection on finances starting from the 2022 Chapter Acts. Then he informed the assembly about the financial status of the Institute and the Province. He also witnessed the change of the provincial treasurer, after having verified the accounts.

In the afternoon, after a session with all the participants, Father Giorgetti met with the treasurers of the communities for practical questions.

The Provincial Superior, Father Weldeghiorghis Asfaha Yohannes, presided over the closing Eucharist, followed by a dinner and a social. (Father José Vieira, mccj)

ITALIA

Relic of Comboni at S. Maria in Organo – Verona

On 3^rd December 2024, the liturgical memorial of Saint Francis Xavier, the patron saint of missions, Msgr. Domenico Pompili, bishop of Verona, placed a relic of Saint Daniel Comboni in the parish church of Santa Maria in Organo, in Piazza Isolo, in front of the monument to Comboni. The initiative for this ceremony was born within the parish community, which asked to have in its church a tangible sign of the holy missionary, who had special relations with it. He, in fact, attended the nearby diocesan seminary; in Via Seminario, on the corner of Porta Organa, he purchased, in 1871, the house for his male Institute and in 1872, for the female Institute, the current building of the Mother House of the Pie Madri della Nigrizia, today the Comboni Missionary Sisters. The building, which has the shape of a large cloister, is attached to the church and was inhabited for five centuries, until the early 1800s, by the Olivetan Benedictine monks. From this proximity of Comboni to the church of Santa Maria in Organo, it is easily deduced that he celebrated Mass and preached there several times.

Now, the relic of the holy Founder of the Comboni family extends the bonds of missionary brotherhood to other nearby parishes, in Veronetta, as the parish priest of the area emphasised. Present at the celebration were diocesan priests, numerous Combonians (priests, brothers, sisters, seculars and lay people) and a good number of parishioners.

In his homily, Bishop Domenico highlighted the two great missionary saints celebrated that day, Francis Xavier and Daniel Comboni, pioneers and promoters of evangelisation in Asia and Africa. At the end of the joyful ceremony, Father Eliseo Tacchella, superior of the Mother House, thanked the bishop and all those present (Father Romeo Ballan, mccj).

MOÇAMBIQUE

Young Combonians of Mozambique meet at Nampula

Ten young missionaries from the Province met from 19^th to 22^nd November, at the novitiate community of St. Francis Xavier in Nampula. The first three days were dedicated to the themes of ongoing formation, planned by Fr. António Manganhe, the current master of novices. Sister Raquel Mariano de Souza, of the Sisters of Jesus the Good Shepherd (Pastorelles) led the reflection on the first day on the theme ‘Echoes of Synodality’. With the help of some biblical and cultural references, Sister Raquel began by recalling the experiences of synodality that each one has had in the course of their life – walking together and listening to each other – and then presented a summary of the five parts that make up the Final Document of the XVI General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality. To delve deeper into the theme, two groups were formed which afterwards shared in a plenary session the various reflections and personal, community and pastoral experiences. The theme of the second day was ‘Lifestyle, transparency and sustainability’. The participants tried to reflect starting from their personal lives and the current reality of the communities of the Province and the Institute.

The theme of the third day was ‘Prayer, the source and support of our apostolate and our missionary vocation’, starting from the testimony of St. Daniel Comboni and his Writings. In particular, it was emphasised that there must always be a healthy balance between personal and community prayer life and pastoral life.

On the morning of the last day, 22^nd November, a Eucharist of thanksgiving was celebrated, presided over by Father Manganhe, the provincial head of ongoing formation. Other confreres in formation, some sisters, neighbours and friends of the novitiate community participated in the celebration.

The missionaries then visited the Comboni community and the Industrial Technical Institute of Carapira, with a visit to the famous beach of Chocas-Mar, in Mossuril, where the first Comboni missionaries who arrived in Mozambique settled at the end of 1946 (Fr. António Natal Manganhe, mccj and deacon Sérgio Vilanculo, mccj).

PCA

Costa Rica: Continental Assembly of Missionary Animation

The Continental Assembly of Missionary Animation took place in San José, Costa Rica, from 3^rd to 6^th December. The fourteen participants gathered at the pastoral house of the diocese of Alajuela, in the province of the same name.

First of all, we had the opportunity to delve deeper into the theme of missiology with the help of Father Jafet Peytrequín Ugalde, national director of the PMS of Costa Rica, who, after participating in CAM6, came to share with us his vision of missionary congresses in America, especially this last one, which urges us to energetically resume missionary animation in the local Churches so as to live the mission ad gentes with greater commitment.

Father Fernando González Galarza, general secretary of the mission, recalled the conclusions of the General Assembly of Missionary Animation that took place in Rome last April, inviting us to a greater ‘incursion’ into digital media and to seek more qualified collaboration, involving the laity in our missionary service.

Monsignor Vittorino Girardi reviewed the capitular documents that remind us of the commitment to missionary animation and cited, in this regard, other documents of the Church, reminding us of the famous phrase from the Puebla documents in which the Church of America is invited to give missionaries to the world from its poverty.

Finally, Monsignor Bartolomé Buigues Oller, bishop of the diocese that hosted us, presented an overview of the missionary dimension in the Churches of Costa Rica that are increasingly engaged in this important task of the universal Church.

After the reflections, we began to concretise the continental plan of missionary animation, which is an update of the previous one and which pushes us to renew our commitment to spread the passion for the mission towards the people of God, seeing ourselves as missionary animators in synodality, in the style of St. Daniel Comboni, and to work in communion, participation and collaboration. The assembly concluded on December 6 at the feet of Our Lady of the Angels, at her national sanctuary, in Cartago. (Father Héctor Peña, mccj)

PERU

Brother Kuno Stösser completes seventy years of religious life

On Sunday, 8^th December, the second Sunday of Advent and the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, with great joy and deep gratitude to God our Father, we celebrated the gift of the missionary vocation of Brother Kuno Stösser. The chapel of the provincial house in Monterrico, Lima, was filled with friends of the community, neighbours, friends of Brother Kuno and religious sisters who worked with him over the years. At the end of the Mass, he addressed the following words to us:

«I only want to offer you a brief summary of my life in Peru. 70 years have passed since my first vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Religious life is a calling from God, a grace and a privilege to which we must respond. This anniversary is a day of thanksgiving to God, but also of asking for forgiveness for everything that was not perfect in my fulfilment of the vows. Even after becoming religious, we remain people exposed to temptations and especially to selfishness.

«I made my first vows on 8^th December 1954, exactly 100 years after the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX, on the same day in 1854. Four years later, on 11^th February 1858, Our Lady appeared in Lourdes, saying, “I am the Immaculate Conception”.

«In 1955, my superiors sent me to Peru. A few months earlier, they had asked me to learn to cook because, in addition to becoming a community companion of the parish priest of the new parish of San Pio X in Mirones, Lima, I would also be his cook.

«When in 1958 Pius XII erected the new prefecture nullius of Tarma, entrusting it to the congregation of the Missionary Sons of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MFSC), Father Anton Kühner was chosen to govern it (It would later become the diocese of Tarma-Cerro de Pasco) and he asked me to accompany him on his trips to get to know the new prelature, then completely unknown to us.

«In 1964, Father Kühner was ordained bishop and entrusted me with building the seminary of Tarma. I liked the idea very much and, from that moment, I also began to design and build chapels, churches and parish houses in the Tarma area, then, following the official parameters for architectural projects, I also built the large churches of Huánuco and Tarma.

«In 1979 I went to Rome to participate in the general chapter that sanctioned the ‘reunification’ of the two branches of the Institute (FSCJ and MFSC). After the chapter, I was assigned to the province of Germany, appointed to the community of Bamberg.

«At the end of 1980, Msgr. Kühner who was appointed bishop of Huánuco in July of that year, asked me to return to Huánuco to finish the construction of his residence. In 1984, I was again sent to Lima, to the provincial headquarters in Monterrico, to finish the construction of the new postulancy. Since then, I have not moved from Lima.

«The most necessary thing for a religious is to fulfil his daily duties, to be faithful to the prayers of each day, such as the Eucharist, lauds, visits to the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel, vespers, the rosary and evening prayers, and to attend the annual spiritual retreat.

«Every day we receive numerous graces from God, even if we do not realise it; like the sun that rises every morning, even if we do not see it.

Today I want to renew my vows, and I intend to do so until the end of my life. Thank you to all of you who wanted to be close to me on this feast with your prayers. I ask you to continue praying for me.

«To conclude, I can only say: O God, may my life be a song of gratitude to you, for your love, your goodness and your mercy».

Joy and gratitude were redoubled on December 23, when Brother Kuno turned 94. (Father Nelson Mitchell, mccj)

PORTUGAL

VII LCM General Assembly

From 9^th to 15^th December 2024, the VII General Assembly of the Lay Comboni Missionaries (LCM) was held at the house of the Comboni community in Maia. The motto of the assembly was ‘All together for the mission’.

The 29 participants – 20 LCM and 9 Comboni missionaries – came from 16 countries on three continents: Africa (9), America (9) and Europe (11). Of the five members of the current Central Committee, the lay people Alberto de la Portilla (Spain) and Marco Piccione (Italy) were present, as well as Father Arlindo Pinto (Rome), the contact person of the General Council for the LCM.

The morning of the first day was dedicated to prayer. The opening Mass was presided over by Father Fernando Domingues, Provincial Superior of Portugal.

On Wednesday the 11^th, an online meeting was held with the representatives of the General Councils of the Comboni Family. On Thursday afternoon, the participants went on a pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine of Fatima. On Tuesday and Friday, some testimonies of the LCM working in international communities in Mozambique, Kenya, the Central African Republic, Peru and Brazil were heard online.

The main topics discussed during the Assembly were the following: the presentation of the path taken by each LCM group from the different countries, during the last six years, at all levels (formation, mission, economy, and organisation) and the reflection and approval of the LCM statutes, to be presented to the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life.

On Saturday the 14^th, the members of the new Central Committee that will coordinate the LCM for the next six years were elected: Flavio Schmidt, from Brazil, Mukami Anne Muthee, from Kenya, Anna Obyrtacz, from Poland, and Alberto de la Portilla, from Spain, re-elected, who will also continue to be the general coordinator. Father Arlindo Pinto will continue in his role as representative of the General Council.

Alberto, in the statement he addressed to the LCM and to the entire Comboni Family, underlined the hopes born from this new assembly: «An assembly that we hope will help us to mature and deepen our vocation in every corner of the world, and to acquire responsibility in our journey of autonomy at all levels». Regarding his re-election, he added: «I hope it is not only a service of continuity, but of consolidation of the important aspects and progress that we need as an international movement. The true protagonists are each and every one of the CLM, each of our communities and our groups, listening and available to the Holy Spirit».

The work concluded on Saturday evening, 14^th December, with the Mass presided over by Father David Domingues, Vicar General. Also, the following day, the Third Sunday of Advent and International Day of the LCM, Father David presided over the Mass in the presence of those participating in the assembly, together with the people of God, in the chapel of the house in Maia.

LET US PRAY FOR OUR BELOVED DEAD

THE FATHER: Bernardo Joaquim, of Monsignor António Manuel Bogaio Constantino (MO).

THE MOTHERS: Angelica, of Father Gerardo Oviedo Casillas (PE); Teresina, of Brother Claudio Parotti (I).

THE BROTHERS: Ponciano, of Father Moises Albarina (A); Mario, of Brother Silvano Bergamini (I).

THE COMBONI MISSIONARY SISTERS: Sr. Maria Adela González Rodríguez (E); Sr. Benvenuta Frattini (I); Sr. Faiza Teresina Foad Guergues (EG).