What's New

This week we will be adding another article to the new Education Section in preparation for the educators meeting in Salamanca, Spain planned for July 2001. It is available in English and Italian. From the Congregation For Catholic Education:

THE RELIGIOUS DIMENSION OF EDUCATION IN A CATHOLIC SCHOOL: GUIDELINES FOR REFLECTION AND RENEWAL

We also start this week a new series of Meet an SCJ. We will begin presenting the 17 participants in this year's Ongoing Formation Program being held at the International College in Rome under the direction of Osnildo Klann (BM). The course began in September and will run to the end of the year. The language group used is Portuguese. This week we present Br. Antonio Galvão de Honorato BM, who made is first profession on November 11, 1963.

The statistics for the congregation as of August 31, 2000, have been posted to the Documents and Letters section. Please take note that a change was made this year by the secretary general's office reducing the number of times these statistics are published from four to three times a year. As of august 31st there were 2298 scjs world wide plus an additional 114 novices (cf. Status Congregationis - 31/08/2000).

What's Happening

Congratulations

To Savino Cannone IM who was ordained a priest at Andria, on September 9, 2000.

Rome

Students have returned and the house is full. There is literally no 'room' in the inn until the course in ongoing formation concludes at the end of the year. There are this year 48 full time residents in addition to 17 participants in ongoing formation.

Meeting of Dehonian Family

Starting on Monday, October 9, 2000, and running until the end of the week scjs, members of religious congregations and secular institutes who share our Dehonian spirituality and lay dehonians from about the world will gather as one family here in Rome using the facilities of Villa Aurelia. We hope to provide extensive coverage of the events here on our website.

Talking vocations

September 18-21, 35 SCJs gathered in San Antonio to talk about vocations: the personal vocational experience of some of the congregation's younger members, the changing realities of religious life and the impact of such changes on vocation ministry, the needs and culture of people in generations "X" and "Y" (basically those 35 and younger), the experience of vocation directors working with younger people, and strategies for future vocational development.

For more on this visit the Fridge Notes website, produced by the US Province the URL for this article is:http://www.fridgenotes.org/pages/September25.html. There is a fine selection of photos that accompany the story by Mary Gorski.

A Photo

Dave Jackson (US) who is part of the ministry team serving Willacy County, Texas sent along this photo taken during the height of the severe forest fires that plagued much of the Western United States this past summer. The photo had been sent to him with the accompanying note:

This is awesome and at the same time rather chilling. Mother nature is spectacular. This awesome picture was taken in the Bitterroot National Forest here in Montana on August 6, 2000 by a fire behavior analyst from Fairbanks, Alaska by the name of John McColgan with a Digital camera. Since he was working while he took the picture, he cannot sell or profit from it so hen should at least be recognized as the photographer of this once in a lifetime shot.

NB Willacy County is in South Texas very near the Mexican boarder in the diocese of Brownsville. The scjs maintain a county wide website which can be located at http://www.vsta.com/~spujdak/ . It is also can be found on our links page

Please Remember

+P. Peter Miller (US)

born: 23.08.1917|
first profession: 01.10.1940
ordination: 21.12.1945
died: 03.10.2000 at Wauwatosa, WI

Fr. Peter Miller, scj, died this morning (October 3) at St. Camillus Health Center in Wauwatosa (Milwaukee), Wis.

A Chicago native, Fr. Peter Miller attended Divine Heart Seminary in Donaldson, Ind, went to the novitiate after graduation and professed his first vows on October 1, 1940. He was ordained in 1945 and soon after, was named prefect of discipline back where he started: at Divine Heart. He served as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe in East Chicago, Ind., and later, as superior of St. Joseph's Indian School in South Dakota. While in South Dakota, he also chaired the Tekawitha Conference, an organization of Catholics who minister to Native Americans in the western United States. In 1956, he returned once again to Divine Heart, this time as rector.

Following Fr. Joseph DePalma's election as superior general in 1959, Fr. Miller was appointed as provincial superior of what was then the North American Province. He continued as provincial until 1966. After his years in administration, he returned to parish ministry at OLG in East Chicago and later at St. Cecilia's parish in San Antonio. He was also director of the missions and superior of Sacred Heart Monastery. One of his last assignments before full time retirement was as a missionary in De Aar, South Africa, where he ministered from 1987-1992.

Since 1997, he had been a member of the Villa Maria community with residence at St. Camillus.

From Mary Gorski,
US SCJ office of communications

Letters from the First Novices

In the seventeenth in our series from CORRESPONDENCE OF THE FIRST NOVICES BEFORE THE "CONSUMMATUM EST 1878-1883" by Egidio Driedonkx, we present excerpts from a letter written by Fr. Alejandro, Sacerdos, de Pascal to Fr. Dehon.

"May I begin by saying that the Sacred Heart continues to bless this trip in a moving, yet sensitive, way. The letter that I sent you gives some details about the visit with Miss "D" in Lons-le-Saulier. Her dedication to our work can give us support in a greater way than we could have hoped for. Aside from her physical and moral fatigue, she has done a lot during these past two days in Bourg....