austraLasia #1993
EAO's place in the mosaic of Europe's heartland
ROME: 29th November 2007 -- After fourteen weeks in his homeland, the Regional, Fr Klement, passed briefly (very!) through Rome and immediately flew out to Korea to complete the last consultation for a new provincial in the six year period 2002-8. He had just finished the final Extraordinary Visitation of that term as well - in the Czech Republic, which includes the mission territory of Bulgaria. In fact, this has been his longest stay in his mother country since he escaped from the Iron Curtain in 1984 in order to realise his missionary dream.
During the visitation to a province with 178 confreres living and working in 18 communities, average age 52, with one novice, the most frequently asked question was 'How can we evangelise and educate young people to the faith?'. Fr Klement found that the EAO daily life and experience of mission 'inter gentes' came in handy here. In fact he adopted the Korean practice of concluding the Eucharist each day with the exhortation 'Go, and proclaim the Gospel!'.
CEP province focuses mainly on parish work (60) with 12 Youth Centres, then some specialised work like the Portal Publishing House. It also runs a theological faculty with 1,000 students (at Ceske Budejovice) and a School of Higher Education for Pedagogy, Social Work and Theology. One confrere runs the unique Catholic TV station NOE. The Salesians are the most numerous of the male Congregations in the Czech Republic, and the Salesian Cooperators and VDB have considerable apostolic impact in the field of catechetics, youth ministry and family apostolate.
But to return to the EAO connection and proclaiming the Gospel! BY and large, the Visitor found that the experience of the relatively young Churches of East Asia and Oceania are inspiring for the older Churches especially in post-communist central and eastern Europe. He found that with a fresh missionary impulse there is some sense of a fresh evangelisation.
Lat year European provincials and others from all across Europe and its outreaches met at the request of the Rector Major. The theme was 'Europe - mission territory'. The Visitor found that while everyone is now more aware of this, not many confreres are formed to be missionaries in their own land. One of the conclusions he drew for the province was the need for this, and he shared some thoughts on a future 'Salesian school for evangelisation'. He drew on experiences in places like Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Korea - to name some.
The Czech Republic clearly had a crash course in missionary endeavour in EAO! There has already been some activity by way of funding of projects in the EAO region and hopefully in a few days time some funds will be forthcoming for the East Timor Post Novitiate. The line Fr Klement took was 'We need each other'. For regions like Moravia and Bohemia, with no access to oceans, any kind of 'opening' is something fresh - and now the Salesian Family in those areas are well acquainted with some details of Salesian Family life in the myriad island nations of the EAO region.
Mongolia recently had a visit from the Prague Caritas director, to look at a radio distance learning project there. Salesians in the Ulanbaatar DB Tech Centre have presented him with some projects. Fr Klement noted that around Prague one could hear Mongolian spoken in the streets, along with Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese. Vietnamese make up a third of the most numerous foreign workers in the Republic, some 50,000 of them. Many Czech bishops are seeking Vietnamese speaking priests to help minister to this diaspora.
Cebu's famed 'Santo Nino' is in fact a copy of the Infant of Prague, venerated especially in the Carmelite Church for centuries, in Prague. Fr Klement paused there to pray for the two provinces in the Philippines and their numerous missionaries.
And one final note: the Czech Salesian Brothers have taken advantage of material produced at the EAO Brothers meeting in Cambodia in 2006. They have begun translating the material for their own use.
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use BoscoWiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org
EAO's place in the mosaic of Europe's heartland
ROME: 29th November 2007 -- After fourteen weeks in his homeland, the Regional, Fr Klement, passed briefly (very!) through Rome and immediately flew out to Korea to complete the last consultation for a new provincial in the six year period 2002-8. He had just finished the final Extraordinary Visitation of that term as well - in the Czech Republic, which includes the mission territory of Bulgaria. In fact, this has been his longest stay in his mother country since he escaped from the Iron Curtain in 1984 in order to realise his missionary dream.
During the visitation to a province with 178 confreres living and working in 18 communities, average age 52, with one novice, the most frequently asked question was 'How can we evangelise and educate young people to the faith?'. Fr Klement found that the EAO daily life and experience of mission 'inter gentes' came in handy here. In fact he adopted the Korean practice of concluding the Eucharist each day with the exhortation 'Go, and proclaim the Gospel!'.
CEP province focuses mainly on parish work (60) with 12 Youth Centres, then some specialised work like the Portal Publishing House. It also runs a theological faculty with 1,000 students (at Ceske Budejovice) and a School of Higher Education for Pedagogy, Social Work and Theology. One confrere runs the unique Catholic TV station NOE. The Salesians are the most numerous of the male Congregations in the Czech Republic, and the Salesian Cooperators and VDB have considerable apostolic impact in the field of catechetics, youth ministry and family apostolate.
But to return to the EAO connection and proclaiming the Gospel! BY and large, the Visitor found that the experience of the relatively young Churches of East Asia and Oceania are inspiring for the older Churches especially in post-communist central and eastern Europe. He found that with a fresh missionary impulse there is some sense of a fresh evangelisation.
Lat year European provincials and others from all across Europe and its outreaches met at the request of the Rector Major. The theme was 'Europe - mission territory'. The Visitor found that while everyone is now more aware of this, not many confreres are formed to be missionaries in their own land. One of the conclusions he drew for the province was the need for this, and he shared some thoughts on a future 'Salesian school for evangelisation'. He drew on experiences in places like Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Korea - to name some.
The Czech Republic clearly had a crash course in missionary endeavour in EAO! There has already been some activity by way of funding of projects in the EAO region and hopefully in a few days time some funds will be forthcoming for the East Timor Post Novitiate. The line Fr Klement took was 'We need each other'. For regions like Moravia and Bohemia, with no access to oceans, any kind of 'opening' is something fresh - and now the Salesian Family in those areas are well acquainted with some details of Salesian Family life in the myriad island nations of the EAO region.
Mongolia recently had a visit from the Prague Caritas director, to look at a radio distance learning project there. Salesians in the Ulanbaatar DB Tech Centre have presented him with some projects. Fr Klement noted that around Prague one could hear Mongolian spoken in the streets, along with Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese. Vietnamese make up a third of the most numerous foreign workers in the Republic, some 50,000 of them. Many Czech bishops are seeking Vietnamese speaking priests to help minister to this diaspora.
Cebu's famed 'Santo Nino' is in fact a copy of the Infant of Prague, venerated especially in the Carmelite Church for centuries, in Prague. Fr Klement paused there to pray for the two provinces in the Philippines and their numerous missionaries.
And one final note: the Czech Salesian Brothers have taken advantage of material produced at the EAO Brothers meeting in Cambodia in 2006. They have begun translating the material for their own use.
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use BoscoWiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org
