nuntia-08.JPGFrom the Church:The Pope’s Trip to the USA; Msgr. Luca Brandolini, C.M.. From the Curia: Activities of the Superior General; General Postulation; Mission in El Alto. From the Provinces: CEVIM; The Mission in Greece; News from Oceania:




From the Church:
We begin this month’s NUNTIA with two items, which, although they refer to the entire Church, affect the Congregation of the Mission and even the whole Vincentian Family in a particular way:
The Pope’s Trip to the USA: This news was widely diffused and commentated by the mass media. In evoking it, NUNTIA joins our North American brothers and sisters who experienced the pleasure of seeing how warmly the Church in North America received its Shepherd and was stimulated by his word and example to continue facing the challenges of our time. The defense of human rights, deeply rooted in the very nature of humankind, is the placard with which the Church leads the march toward a new order of peace, justice, and love in the world.
Msgr. Luca Brandolini, C.M.: On 16 April, at the seat of the CLV-Edizioni Litugiche in the Leonine College, his book was presented. It is entitled: Unus Panis Unum Corpus. La Liturgia Fuente y Cumbre de la Vida de la Iglesia (One Bread, One Body. The Liturgy: Source and Summit of the Church’s Life).
Msgr. Brandolini, C.M., Bishop of Sora–Aquino–Pontecorvo, is presently President of the Liturgical Action Center. His first years of ecclesiastical studies coincided with the initial seeds of liturgical reform that then would be made concrete by the Second Vatican Council. He is a doctor in Sacred Liturgy. Father Brandolini took his first steps in the world of liturgy at the C.L.V., which is now publishing his book. He collaborated there with the missioners: Msgr. Bugnini and Fathers C. Braga and A. Pistoia.
As stated in the book’s presentation “the reader is taken by the hand and led by the author through language of biblical and patristic flavor, but also straightforward and free-flowing, to a clear understanding of the Liturgy by way of a few topics that have taken Father Luca, a zealous catechist and mystagogue, on a tour throughout the whole of Italy. He makes bishops, priests and laity breathe the fresh and rejuvenated air of a Liturgy restored to its original dignity as the axis of the spiritual life of believers after centuries of antiquated immobility.”
The Vincentian Liturgical Center (C.L.V.) organized, in collaboration with the Liturgical Action Center, this presentation to honor and give thanks to Msgr. Brandolini on the 20th anniversary of his episcopal consecration. Taking part in the presentation of the book were: His Eminence Cardinal Franc Rodé, C.M.; Enzo Bianchi, Prior of the Monastic Community of Bose (Northern Italy); and Father Silvano Maggiani, President of the Theological Faculty “Marianum.”
Some bishops, priests, missioners, Daughters of Charity, and laity joined in a gesture of communion and affection toward Msgr. Brandolini, who is on the verge of completing 75 years dedicated to the cause of the Liturgy.
From the Curia:
Activities of the Superior General: From the 3rd to the 6th, he was in Portugal at AMM’s International Meeting. This Association is celebrating a jubilee year that will conclude with the International Congress in Paris from 16-20 November 2009 to commemorate the centenary of its pontifical approval.
The meeting was held on the 4th and 5th in Fatima, which gae the participants the possibility of visiting the sanctuary several times.
The Superior General took advantage of his stay in Portugal to meet various members of the Vincentian Family, to talk with JMV’s National Council, to get to know the missioners better, and to meet the 20 Sister Servants the province has. He dedicated approximately 45 minutes of dialog time to them. As he himself assures, the visit to Portugal was brief, but very profitable.
From 10 April to 16 May, he is making the Canonical Visitation of the Province of Madrid. One can find abundant information, with a wealth of photos, on the website of the Madrid Province: www.paulesmadrid.org (click on “noticias”).
General Postulation: On 24 April 2008, the diocesan process for the Beatification of the Servant of God Anna Cantalupo, Daughter of the Charity, was closed in Catania (Italy). She was born in Naples in 1888 and died in Catania in 1983. The Closing Session was presided by Archbishop Salvatore Gristina. Daughters of Charity, missioners, members of Vincentian Associations, especially the groups of AIC (Ladies of Charity), which the Servant of God directed, assisted. She was the Apostle of Charity, par excellence, in Catania. The Postulator General, Father G. Guerra, delivered the Acts to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in Rome and the Roman phase of the Beatification Process has opened.
Mission in El Alto: We include in this section under the Curia news from this International Mission, which depends directly on the Superior General.
Father Cyrille de Nanteuil, who ordinarily keeps the French-speaking readers informed, wrote a long report, in very acceptable Spanish, on the Mission of Lent 2008.
Seen from the tranquility of the office, the program seems quite interesting. Joining the missionary team were three Missionaries of Charity (Indian, Ecuadorian and Argentinean), a mother of a family, four young members of JMV from El Alto, two young members of the El Alto parish, and two other catechists from Italaque, for a total of 12. They served as apostles, accompanying the priest in the missionary venture.
The schedule was established in detail: prayer in the morning; visits to the families to invite them to adult baptismal preparation that would begin at the end of March, to uncover cases of need and illness, and to take the parochial census; meals at the expense of the receiving community; catechetical activities for children, youth, and adults, centered on Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection; attention to the sick; initiation to prayer, not remaining as a nice message, but coming to a personal meeting with Jesus Christ in our lives; and community Mass sung in Aymara.
According to the planned itinerary, as described in the chronicle, visits were made each day to a different community or two, if they were nearby. There was little time to evangelize, but the people would not come for more time either, since it was not a campaign with concrete objectives, like baptismal preparation, for example.
In the final evaluation, the missionaries blessed the Lord for everything he had done for them and commented how they found the difficulties of the missionary journey surmountable: the disparity of the missionaries; the language that, in the end, almost all were able to use; the rain that, though it did not stop, never fell on top of them; the heavy loads with which they had to walk in such high altitudes; the nourishment that was more abundant than expected; the lodging, uncomfortable but at least affording cover; and all those slabs that for their magnitude seemed immovable, but that “the Lord’s angel” had removed before the missionaries arrived.
From the Provinces:
CEVIM: From 1-4 April 2008, the meeting of the Visitors’ Conference of Europe and the Middle East took place in the VINCENTINUM Center of the Province of Poland.
Conscious of the importance of the Vincentian Family’s participation, there where decisions that concern the life of persons, especially of the poor, take place, the Visitors agreed to support, through the Permanent Council, contacts and collaboration with AIC’s representation, which enjoys participative status before European organisms.
In accord with the Statutes, the elections of the new president and vice-president of CEVIM took place during the meeting. Elected for the next three years were: Brian Moore as president and Nicola Albanesi as vice-president. Father Antoine Nakad is a member of the Permanent Council for the 2009 Meeting, which is planned for Beirut (Lebanon). The secretary, Giuseppe Turati, was elected for three years in 2007.
The Mission in Greece: The Thessalonica house belongs to the Province of Paris. On the occasion of the visit the Superior General made to them on 12-19 March 2008, they wrote a few notes on the life and mission of the community. We offer an extract of them:
The CM Community in Greece has a long and glorious history. From 25 January to 27 September 2008, it celebrated the 225th anniversary of the arrival of the Congregation there.
To the difficulties of the mission, in a context in which 85% of the inhabitants are Orthodox and Catholics are not very well considered either by the authorities or by the society, are added the problems of an international community, with a small number of members (three Poles, three Greeks and a Filipino), the health impairments of some and the difficulty of defending oneself against the Greek of others.
The activities, nevertheless, are great. They have care of a parish in Thessalonica, with some two to three thousand Catholics in the city and many others dispersed in the north of Greece. Among the Catholics, there is an important nucleus of Greek origin and the ones of foreign origin are ever more numerous, those who have been settled there for some time already and others who have arrived more recently, like the Albanians. The confreres attend to the worship in the Kavala Parish, which is without a resident priest since 1981. They visit the Catholics, especially those of foreign origin, dispersed in the diaspora of the North of Greece. They try to make the laity responsible for forming alive and responsible Christian communities, which becomes particularly interesting in a Church with a somewhat clerical mentality. They promote charitable works in favor of the poor, who are very numerous. And they try to maintain and intensify fraternal relations with other Christian confessions, especially with the Orthodox world.
It is not surprising that the Bishop of Thessalonica wrote a letter to the missionaries, on the occasion of the 225th anniversary celebration, in which he was full of praise for the work of the community and regretted the departure of the Daughters of Charity from Thessalonica, yearning for their return in accordance with the desires of the hierarchy and the people.
News from Oceania: In 2008 three men from the Solomon Islands were accepted into the Congregation, the first from the Solomons. In 2004 the first seminarian from Tonga began his studies. These seminarians are now with our Fijian students at Wailuku.
In July, the World Youth Day celebrations will be held in Sydney, concluding with a concelebrated Mass with Pope Benedict XVI as principal celebrant. In the week prior to that, 9-13 July, the Superior General and Father Manuel Ginete will be attending celebrations at our College, St Stanislaus, in Bathurst. We expect about 300 youth to be present and they will be joined by about 2,000 youth from the Diocese of Bathurst for the final night. Recently the College hosted 1,900 local school children when the World Youth Day Cross and Icon were here in Bathurst. The children, including our own students, gave presentations on the history of education in the area. This included the history of the Aborigines and the contribution of Religious Orders and Congregations to Catholic Education.
In 2002, two Vincentians commenced ministry in the Diocese of Townsville in Northern Australia, a diocese that is approximately the same size in area as Germany. Like many rural dioceses in Australia, the coastal areas have larger populations while the interior is often desert with sparse populations. This diocese was deemed to be particularly needy and was in keeping with our charism to work with the most neglected and abandoned in our own societies.
Our ministries here include: parishes, hospital and nursing home chaplaincy, working with refugees, working with the St. Vincent de Paul Society, working with Centacare (Catholic Welfare Agency) and with the homeless.
The bishop has only nine active diocesan priests with only one under the age of sixty years. Eleven priests from religious congregations and overseas countries also work in the diocese. In 2008, there are four Vincentians ministering here, including one confrere from the Province of the Philippines. The overseas priests are three priests from the Philippines and two priests from India. This diocese is really “mission territory” in our own homeland. With declining numbers in the priesthood and also among the faithful, with limited resources in terms of money and personnel, with vast distances to travel – there are many challenges to our ministry.
Our local Vincentian community consists of five members who are spread over a distance of 1400 kilometers. We minister in three dioceses and come together three or four times a year for time together in community. This is one of the ways we are attempting to respond to the poor and marginalized in 2008.
Nominationes

Stanislaw Szczepanik7 APRILDirector D.C. Puerto Rico
Michael J. Carroll7 APRILVisitor USA-EST
Jozef Noga10 APRILVisitor Slovakia

Ordinationes

BIEN-AIMÉ DavidPor05/04/2008
ELIE FredyPor05/04/2008
LAUPE SocratePor05/04/2008
VILLANUEVA PACHECO Rubén DaríoArg05/04/2008

Necrologium

NomenCond.Dies ob.Prov.Aet.Voc.
CARRANCO FLORES Juan NonatoSac.13/02/2008Aeq7959
KAMINSKI AndréSac.13/04/2008Brasil,Cur6952
CONNER Stanley JamesFra.14/04/2008Ocn6132
GOUVEIA Ferreira AntonioSac.1/04/2008Lus8057
GALLÁSTEGUI Achúcarro LuísSac.26/04/2008Spain-Cae7458