Dear Brothers,

Along with this brief letter, you will find enclosed a copy of the news page from our scj web site (www.scj.org) for the week of April 25, 1998. We opened this site on the first Sunday of Advent, and with the help of Zdzislaw Huber (FIN), who servers as our web master, have been maintaining it ever since.(1) In addition, with the assistance of Maurice Légaré (CG) in Montréal,and Javier Luengo (HI) in Rome, we are able to publish the news page in English, French and Spanish weekly. Unfortunately, we are still in need of an Italian translator. The news page is only one aspect of our scj home page. We encourage you to take a look at it via the internet.

The chief reason for sending a copy of the news page for this week is to introduce you to the addition we have made to the necrology report. Many provinces publish a brief obituary when a member of their province dies. This week we have an example of one from the US Province announcing the recent death of Br. Conrad Thelen (US). Believing the old adage A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS, the article also contains a photo of Br. Conrad sent to us via email.

In short, my dear brothers, we are encouraging you to send a photo and your published obituary when a member of your province dies so that we might include it when making the announcement of a death on our scj web site. Please feel free to send this information in one of the following languages: English, Italian, French or Spanish. That may require a brief translation on your part, but makes our work much easier. It also takes into account that I am not always in Rome when I receive this information electronically.

We hope this is not asking too much of you, or your staff. We believe it will help honor those scjs who have given their all on behalf of our scj mission. We also believe this is another small step toward building We the Congregation. It is one thing to pray for a name, another when a face and biography flesh out that name.

To summarize: When notifying Rome of a death in your province, if you would be so kind as to send via email and attachment a copy of your obituary (with translation in one of the above languages please), and a recent photo of the deceased to : tomc@scj.org. We will publish it on our scj web site news page just a soon as we can to.

(1) Cf. # 51 The Plan: We the Congregation in Service to the Mission: 1997-2003