austraLasia
1560
Salesian Sisters
from South Pacific Region at centre of FMA world - for
now
MELBOURNE: 13th May 2006 --
In this 125th anniversary year of the death of St. Mary Mazzarello, and given
that Mother Antonia Colombo the Superior General of the FMA, Sr. Ciri Hernandez,
Mission Councillor, and Sr. Therese-Anne Curmi, Visiting Councillor are all in
Melbourne on 13th May, it is certain that the FMA focus is in the South Pacific
Region just now. Sr Therese-Anne, herself once provincial in
Australia-Samoa, is concluding the Canonical Visitation of the Sisters in this
region. The Mother General and Mission Councillor have joined with her on
this occasion, as tomorrow the mid-Chapter Evaluation meeting begins. It
will conclude on 18th May.
Sr Edna Mary MacDonald, current
provincial of SPR and based in Melbourne, recently quoted Mary Mazzarello who in
a letter she wrote to her Sisters at the time, said: "I am rather sorry that you
have some difficulties because you are so few and have so much work to do" (L
56,3). Sr Edna Mary rightly drew on this to point to the extraordinary
task facing the SPR Region. With just 35 Sisters and already at work in three
nations (Australia, Samoa and American Samoa), the Sisters have undertaken with
the full backing of the General Council to begin a presence in the Solomon
Islands in 2007.
The Mid-Chapter Evaluation sessions will
face up to questions such as what is changing in the lives of the Sisters,
personally, in community, in the province, in the entire Institute; What blocks
or holds back the search to 'choose life'; what directions are becoming clearer
as the Sisters plan for the future.
Whatever their answers
to those questions, and even as one looks at the multinational character of the
35 Sisters involved, including many solid vocations from the islands in which
they are working, it is clear that the Sisters in their South Pacific setting
have not become complacent but have sought to open up avenues of energising
possibility.
______________________
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