PRESENTATION

I’m Br. José Carlos Bermejo, I come from the Spanish Province, which includes Spain and Argentina. In this moment as Religious I carry out the task of First Counselor, which brought me to lead the Province in the last six months, because of the Provincial Superior’s disease.

I manage a social-health structure for dependent elderly people, for home assistance and sick elderly (for terminally ill there’s a palliative care program). I manage the Centre for Health Care Humanization, whoch carries out its activity as well in Spain as in Latin America’s countries. Furthermore I’m professor in several universities, including the Camillianum. I could say that I am a fan of the two legs of our charism, that is direct assistance to the sick and the creation of a culture trying to humanize the world of health care. In fact, I do it with my writings as well. II wrote about forty books that we use in the formation field and to make know the beauty of the camillian charism too.

EXPECTATIONS AND COMMENT ON CHAPTER

This is not the first Chapter for me. The Chapter to me is always an experience of sharing with the complexity and breath of the Order. A larger vision that makes me understand that I’m not the navel of the Order, that my Province is not the only one to exist, that this charism has been able to reach all the countries of the world. So an experience of brotherhood, that is very nice. There’s a little bit of discussion, too. When you discuss you can also see the richness and the different criteria that sometimes are in relation of the different cultures and sometimes of the different personal sensibilities. That is a value as well.

The reelection of Fr. Renato Salvatore as Superior General in my opinion has several interpretations. On one hand we can speak ok continuity, but he didn’t get all the votes of the assembly. That is also to be interpreted positively to me. The assembly issues a challenge to the new Consulta, so to the new Superior General too, the challenge to change some attitudes and to renew some things that maybe have not been done in a complete way. I believe that we as an Order have the challenge to give new strength to our community life, which can be lost, and we have the challenge to look at our identity as consecrated, not just to the priests identity. We are Camillian Religious, not Camillian Fathers, so the promotion of the identity should ensure the increase the number of the Religious in the future, of the Brothers, without not wanting to enhance the identity of the Priests. I think that, as the Evangelico Nutiandi said, the old document which spoke of evangelization and it said that the first reality to evangelize is the Church. Today I’d like to say that we as an Order need an internal evangelization and not only feel operators and agents of evangelization of the world and, in particular, of the health care world.