What's New

The letter from Fr. General for the feast of the Sacred Heart "Witnesses and servants of Reconciliation" has been posted to Letters and Documents Section. You may, of course, link to it directly from this page.

The congregational statistics for the first quarter of this year have been published (Cf. Stats 1st Quarter 1999).

We received word from p. Antonello that the SCJ House in Naples at Marechiaro 46 now has an email address, please make note of it: centrodh@tin.it. In addition please make note of the address for the Procure in Bruxelles procure.scj.bxl@skynet.be. This will be added to our links page.

We have another reflection from the May Formation Meeting by Adalto Chitolina (BM). It is presented here only in the original Portuguese (CF Formation Meeting Reflection).

We present the seventh in our series of Dehon cartoons by Javier Prate, a collaborator on several SCJ publications in Spain. The images are displayed in the church of Saint Martin, Saint Quentin (GA). They are aimed at young people, but can be appreciated by all generations. They depict different scenes in Fr. Dehon's life and his spirituality. this week's image is entitled: "Léon Dehon se fait le propagateur de la pensée du Pape Léon XIII sur la question sociale".

What's Happening

Fr. General with the consent of his council has appointed the district council for India. They will serve until the end of the term of the Administrator "ad interim".

1st Fr. Valerio Pilati
2nd Fr. Sebastião Pitz
3rd Fr. Andrzej Sudol

In addition Fr. General with the consent of his council has appointed Fr. Thomas Garvey as the treasurer of the District of India. The term of his office will begin on May 31st, 1999, and lasts until the end of the term of the Administrator "ad interim".

To help celebrate the 10th anniversary of our scj presence in the Philippines Juan Griffone has prepared a brief history of our new district. The article is available in English and Italian (Cf. SCJ PHILIPPINES 10TH ANNIVERSARY (Brief History).

The scj students in Venezuela have volunteered to help Javier Luengo (HI) to translate our web site into Spanish. They will begin work later this month when Javier travels to Albania. He will be joining Stefan Tertünte (GE) who writes:

"On Sunday, June 6th I will leave together with p. Pierantoni (IS) for Albania. We'll meet at Ancona a group from Caritas (Regione delle Marche) along with some volunteers from Pagliare and together with them we'll take a ship to Albania. We'll all go to the area near our parish. It's an excellent occasion to get into contact with them [Albanians] already on the way."

Fr. Tobia Bassanelli, scj works with Italians living and working in Germany. He has begun a WEBGIORNALE seeking to provide news, information and discussion to the German Italian community. If you would like to receive his journal (in Italian) please write him at: bassanelli@online.de.

Intereramerican Conference of Religious

Peter McKenna (CA) and Maurice Légaré (CGA) attended the VII Interamerican Conference of Religious, held in Toronto from May 21 to May 26. 150 major superiors, representing 300,000 religious from South and North America reflected on religious life in our changing world. "Though the mountains fall... fidelity, solidarity, hope", was the theme of the gathering. In a final document, the participants called for solidarity, respect of human rights and social justice. "Because we experience together the freedom of the Spirit giving birth to new life in unpredictable and fascinating ways, we are open to become midwives and mentors, sharing with the people who are poor and exluded our common fidelity, solidarity and hope", they said. They also joined their voice to those who are calling for the cancellation of foreign debt of the poorest countries, and expressed a profound solidarity with the people of Haiti, asking the American government to make public all the documents concerning the military intervention of 1994.

prepared by Maurice Légaré

Dehon Photo of the Week

This week Stefan Tertünte reflects on Fr. Dehon the Traveler in our continuing series presenting Dehon photos from the Dehonian Archives.