austraLasia 1087
The 'Brother' story in East Asia-Oceania
HO CHI MINH CITY: 20th March 2005 -- The immediate locus of this story is Vietnam, where of the 34 novices for this year, 8 have declared themselves ready to profess as Salesian Brothers, thus giving added strength to one of Don Bosco's cleverest conceptions, at a time when the worldwide picture of the Salesian Brother has shown a worrying decrease, but also at a time when this is being met with a determined plan for promotion of this essential element of the Salesian vocation by the Rector Major and his Council, most recently as part of the two Team Visits of SA and EAO.
All of the statistics for the EAO side of the story can be viewed graphically, or as raw data, from the EAO stats package available from www.bosconet.aust.com but, for the record, here is something of the overall picture for the past ten years.
If we consider the total number of Brothers in each of the nine provinces, it helps to break them into two groups, those who are newly professed as Brothers, and those who are perpetually professed. Obviously a good supply of the former ensures strong numbers amongst the latter. Perhaps the EAO picture here is of some consolation in the light of the worldwide scene. Over the ten year period 1994-2004 two provinces (ITM and THA) have held steady numbers of perpetually professed Brothers, while two other provinces, KOR and VIE have registered a steady increase, Korea moving from 12-17 in that period and VIE 13-23. FIS and GIA have been roughly steady - decrease of just one or two Brothers over the ten years, leaving three provinces, AUL, CIN and FIN registering a clear decrease.
However, to balance that picture, the number of temporarily professed Brothers registered an increase in four of the nine provinces and remained steady in a fifth if one compares simply 1994 with 2004 (there were fluctuations in between in most cases).
Across the region as a whole, the 10 year picture is interesting: The total number of perpetually professed Brothers in the region peaked in 1997 at 154 and has remained at that level until 2004, fluctuating in minor fashion in between. The number of newly professed Brothers has fluctuated between a low point of 38 (in 2000) and its highest in 1994 (50). There were 41 in 2004 - 29 of those were in ITM (16), KOR (8) and VIE (5).
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