NUNTIA, October 2009

From the General Curia: The House is full; The Superior General; SIEV; CmGlobal: New impulse; From the Provinces: Province of Paris.  Region of Vietnam..  Visit of the Superior General. In the Year of the Priest.
PDF Format

NUNTIA

Monthly News Bulletin
from the General Curia of the C.M.

OCTOBER 2009

From the General Curia:
The House is full: We have experienced a very busy and hectic month of October.  There were days in which, like at big cultural or sports shows, we had to hang out a sign “there are no tickets left.”  The house was full to overflowing.
At the October tempo forte session of the General Council, the usual members from the house were joined by those who came for the purpose of speaking with the Council: the Director General of the Daughters of Charity, Father Javier Álvarez Murguía, C.M., and the Director of the Office of Vincentian Solidarity (VSO), Father Miles Heinen, C.M.
During those same days, SIEV (International Secretariat for Vincentian Studies), which had its annual meeting in our house, also talked with the Superior General and his Council.
In addition, we enjoyed the company of four missionaries who, during their break week from CIF, wanted to come to the Eternal City to strengthen their faith and love of the Church near the Vicar of Christ.
At the end of the month, Father Thomas McKenna passed through our house in his function as Delegate of the Superior General to make the Canonical Visitation of the Province of South India and its mission in Tanzania.
The Community also was present at the funeral of the husband of Maria, one of the workers in the house.
The Superior General: The 1^st and 2^nd were dedicated to the evaluation of the General Council’s work.
On the 3^rd and 4^th, he was in Catania, Sicily, with the Secretary General, Father Claudio Santangelo, C.M.  On the morning of the 3^rd itself, after a welcome from representatives of the Vincentian Family, the Superior General met the missionaries and, in the evening, visited the tomb of the Servant of God, Sister Anna Cantalupo in the House of Charity where he celebrated Vespers.  The following day there was a meeting with the Vincentian Family of Sicily, which concluded with the solemn celebration of the Eucharist.  In the late afternoon, he took a flight back to Rome.
The week from the 5^th to the 9^th was dedicated to the Tempo Forte Council Meeting.  The Superior General will report on it in his circular letter.  On Saturday morning, he attended the meeting of SIEV.  The report on it will be presented later in this same issue of NUNTIA.
On the 14^th, he went to Vietnam, after enduring a seven-hour wait in the Rome airport and consequently missing, in Bangkok, the connection that was to take them to Vietnam.  We will give further information in this bulletin.  He returned to Rome on the 26^th.
SIEV (International Secretariat for Vincentian Studies): Under the presidency of the Superior General, accompanied by those Assistants General who wanted to attend, SIEV held its annual meeting at the General Curia of the C.M. on 10-11 October 2009.
The meeting was in response to a request from SIEV formulated when the current team had completed four years of service, because of its awareness of being an organism of the Curia and its desire to live and express its communion with the Superior General and his Council.
During its tempo forte meetings, the General Council accepted and analyzed the report presented by the Executive Secretary of SIEV.
After the recitation of the Prayer of the Vincentian Family, Father Julio Suescun, Executive Secretary of SIEV, opened the session by indicating to the Superior General and his Council SIEV’s gratefulness for the attention that the Council will give to successive reports, as well as the availability of SIEV itself to listen to the suggestions, advice, or modifications that the Council judges opportune.  He continued by presenting the situation of the current SIEV team.
Immediately afterwards, the Superior General spoke up, thanking SIEV for its work and urging it to continue its inspiring and encouraging labor in Vincentian studies, especially by overseeing and aiding new researchers, developing a system of help for those beginning Vincentian studies, and following up on the topic for Vincentiana of Saint Vincent and the Priesthood, a rich and opportune theme in this priestly year.  Then he yielded the floor to the Assistants and all together began a rich dialog on the priorities mentioned.
After a two-hour session, the Superior General and the Assistants withdrew, the members of SIEV took a brief pause, and then continued their reflections on the priorities to bolster in the coming year, in conformity with the recommendations of the Superior General.
CmGlobal: https://cmglobal.org is the website that the General Curia manages, under the responsibility of the Webmaster, Father John B. Freund.
New impulse: The prompt and hidden collaboration of some missionaries permits the almost simultaneous publication on the web blog in English, Spanish, and French of news from the entire Congregation that comes to the Curia or comes out of the Curia itself.  In recent months, the website has experienced a considerable increase in communications.  It is not a question of annulling or underestimating the information that comes from the different provincial websites, but of facilitating the connection and awareness of everything that refers to the C.M.
Translation service: The news is published in one of the three official languages of the C.M., but the translation of the news to one’s own language depends on the generosity of those who can do it.  This service is open to everyone and it has not been entrusted to anyone exclusively.
Role of service: Recently SIEV, one of the departments of the Curia, opened its own section within CmGlobal, in which it gives information about the abundant Vincentian literature already found on the Internet.  We must be grateful to other persons or institutions for this work, but SIEV thinks that it can make known and even facilitate access to it from its own page at https://cmglobal.org.
In the same section of SIEV, a space has been opened for the publication of works that do not have easy access to publication by other means.  One need only send the work to the Curia, to the Webmaster, or to the Executive Secretary of SIEV jusuol@famvin.org.
From the Provinces:
Province of Paris.  Region of Vietnam.  Visit of the Superior General, recounted by himself: At the beginning of the 1930s, the first French mission-aries arrived in Vietnam to assist the Daughters of Charity, who worked in the country from 1928.  But there was no community of missionaries until 1950, when some confreres, who were expelled from China, came.  Since 1995, Vietnam is a Region of the Province of Paris.
I visited this Region of the Province of Paris, together with Father Gérard Du, Assistant General, from 15-25 October 2009.  I had two meetings with the Vincentian Family, one in Saigon and the other in Dalat.  In Saigon we met in the Provincial House of the Daughters of Charity: Missionaries, Daughters of Charity, AIC, SSVP, JMV, and a community of religious founded by a Daughter of the Charity which calls itself Sisters of the Miraculous Medal. We celebrated the Eucharist and then opened a dialog with the Superior General.  The second meeting with the Vincentian Family was in Dalat.  Here the missionaries have their Regional House, Postulatum, and the Scholasticate for Philosophy.
I was in several houses of the sisters and missionaries, confirming that they do much for the benefit of the poor through different services: leper hospitals, children’s homes, accompaniment of young people and terminal AIDS patients, etc.  I also visited some rural communities where the missionaries and the Daughters of Charity carry out a very Vincentian work with the people of the area who live in the fields.
In the Internal Seminary, five seminarians live with their formator and three missionaries who do pastoral work in the area.  In addition, the Region has 20 students in Philosophy and Theology.  To those are added 20 aspirants and 12 postulants.  There are also a deacon and three Brothers, one of whom is employed at the Curia in Rome.  There are 55 priests, 11 of whom are out of the country studying or in pastoral services: one in Rome, one in the USA, two in the Philippines, and seven at the Motherhouse in Paris.  Most of the missionaries in the country serve as parochial assistants, because they do not have access to parochial responsibilities for which the government grants limited licenses.
I hope, and with me the Province of Paris and the Region itself, that the C.M. in Vietnam could become a Vice-Province in the near future.  It is a matter that we have been studying already for some time in the General Council and that soon will be ready to be accomplished.
In short, I remain very impressed by the missionaries on this visit, for the seriousness of their work, the simplicity of their lives, and the happiness of their community living together.
In the Year of the Priest:
In his circular letter of 15 October 2009, the Superior General wrote to the Visitors:
“I have asked Father José Antonio Ubillús to coordinate different activities or articles to make available in the web page www.cmglobal.org.  We have considered things like the edition of Vincentiana a number of years ago that was dedicated to Saint Vincent the priest, a letter from Father Maloney regarding Vincentian priestly qualities. I have also asked a number of other confreres of the Council to contribute short articles, that in some way speak about their experience of priesthood in the context of their Vincentian vocations”.
CmGlobal, in accepting this position of the Superior General and in order to facilitate priestly and Vincentian reflection this year will publish, at least monthly, one of many already published studies, which are not always accessible to everyone, on Saint Vincent and the Priesthood.  On 16 October, the article by Father J. M. Román C.M., entitled, The Priestly Journey of Saint Vincent de Paul: The Beginnings was published.
VINCENTIANA, along the same line, will pay constant attention in all its issues this year to the topic of the priesthood in Saint Vincent, combining in the same priority the two motives that require our attention this year.  In the September-October issue, which is now being printed, references to all the studies on this topic that are available in VINCENTIANA, in the three official languages of the C.M., will be published.
New priests of the C.M.
NUNTIA gives only the name of the newly ordained priests.  In this Year of the Priest, it is worth giving them special attention, in order to thank God for the gift of vocation to the ordained ministry in the Vincentian Family.
From the beginning of the Priestly Year, 19 June 2009, NUNTIA has published the ordination of 33 new priests.  Some of them were in the days or months immediately preceding this date, and the ordination of others is announced for November.  They are for all a motive of happiness and their fidelity also has to be an object of our prayer to the Lord.
But as the Superior General writes, in the above-mentioned circular letter, this will be a year of grace for all the priests of the Congregation and in a special way a year of grace for those who may be struggling in their priestly vocation.
As the Regional Superior, Father Guillaume Leukeumo, reminds us in the Bulletin of the Region of the Cameroon, to pray for them will be a way of living this Priestly Year.
Nominationes/Confirmationes

Ordinationes Sacerdotales

Necrologium