THE PROPHETIC DIMENSION OF OUR CHARISM IN THE WORLD
OF HEALTHCARE
Most hospital chaplains know their job and how to go about it. Most of us know that we could and should be much better at what we are doing, and that we can always learn more and be enriched by new insights. You cannot be taught how to be a hospital chaplain, but you most certainly can be helped to be a more effective one through greater self-knowledge and knowledge of the human sciences. However, it is important that we don’t become too engrossed too engrossed in theory and in the process lose contact/touch with the stress and trauma encountered at the coalface of an ever changing hospital ministry.
I believe that these days together should be characterised by sharing honestly the reality, the difficulties, challenges and what exactly it is that helps us to keep going. So I hope that I can be authentic in this presentation, as I reflect on my own life, and my motivation in the light of the reality I see around me at this moment in the history of the Order and of my own wee province, and my personal response to it all.
I see before me chaplains from the four corners of the world. And as I look out at you I am very aware that the reality of chaplaincy ministry as exercised in Africa, South America or Asia is light years away from that of Europe and North America. I am sure that this issue will surface strongly in the group work and perhaps in other presentations. What unites us all however, is that our Camillian Charism has to be the driving force for all of us as we seek to meet the challenges presented to us by the diverse cultural surroundings in which we work. Our charism is one of our main sources of motivation for doing what we do and never changes. How we express that charism will be constantly changing depending on the reality we have to encounter. Values don’t change while structures must, and our charism is one of our central values.
I am called to be prophetic where I am planted. Yes, the charism will find various different expressions because of the reality of the environment in which we have to minister, but the source of our motivation will be our charism. And I need to remember that by the very nature of my religious profession I am called to be prophetic.
Motivation is of paramount importance if we are to be prophetic. We should never lose sight of the fact that our ministry must always have a strong evangelising dimension, which if missing means we are not doing our work, that we are no longer in mission. We should always be on guard against losing our sense of mission as “when we are clear about the why we can face any how” (V. Frankl). This happens when our identity and motivation are clear. The fact that we are involved in pastoral activity does not of itself mean we are involved in ministry. We are involved in ministry “when both our lives and our actions spontaneously indicate and promote the Kingdom of God” (M. Amalodoes).
If we are true to our charism our ministry will always have an evangelising dimension. So a very pertinent question for all of us is to ask ourselves just how alive is that charism for each one of us right now? Do we burn inside like Camillus?
The healthcare world offers us enormous possibilities for evangelisation. More people pass through the doors of a hospital in a day than through the doors of a Church in a week. No one escapes being hospitalised or of having to visit somebody who is there. Did Camillus not see the hospital as “the mystical vineyard of the Lord” where the “sick are our Lords and masters”
ROME – THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE
Jubilee of the Parish of ‘St. Camillus’
On Saturday 5 November the Parish of ‘St. Camillus de Lellis’ celebrated the Jubilee of the Holy Year of Mercy ‘in the footsteps’ of St. Camillus, starting from the Church of St. Mary Magdalene and ending at the ‘Holy Door’ of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Jubilee of the Homeless
Within the context of the celebrations for the Jubilee of Mercy, on Friday 11 November Pope Francis met thousands of homeless people. On Sunday 13 November, thousands of homeless people from all over Europe took part in the Holy Mass presided over by Pope Francis. Our community and the rectory of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene on Saturday 12 November hosted about ninety pilgrims from Slovakia who came together for a morning of prayer, witness and celebration.
The Feast Day of Our Lady of Health
On 16 November at 19.00, in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, the feast day of Our Lady of Health was celebrated with solemnity and a strong sense of devotion. The celebration of the vespers was presided over by His Eminence Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, the Prefect of the Congregation for religious. In this setting of celebration, the young Camillian professed, Nicola Docimo, a religious of the Province of North Italy, was ordained a deacon.
8 December – Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary
In the evening of 7 December 1591, in this same place, Camillus de Lellis and his first disciples decided to give their lives to service to the sick. Since that day, the Camillians have never ceased to travel down the roads of the world, everywhere bearing witness to the charity of God towards the suffering. The Camillians, the Daughters of St. Camillus, and the women Ministers of the Sick from every part of the world intend to remember that historic day and to reaffirm their wish to imitate Camillus and his first companions by renewing their vows and confirming their desire to live their lives as he did.
At 16.00, Fr. Leocir Pessini will preside over the celebration of the Eucharist, during which the young Camillian religious Giuseppe Salvatore Pontillo, of the Province of Sicily and Naples, will make his perpetual vows.
Formula of life of the Ministers of the Sick (1599)
If someone inspired by our Lord would like to exercise the works of mercy, physical and spiritual, according to the Spirit of our Institute, he should know that he has to die to all the things of the world, that is parents, friends and possessions and to himself, in order to live solely for the crucified Jesus under the most gentle yoke of perpetual Poverty, Chastity and Obedience and service of the poor sick, even if plague stricken, to their physical and spiritual needs, by day and night, according to what it will be commanded to him.
He will do all for the true love of God and as penance for his sins: remembering the Truth, Jesus Christ, who says “insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me”; and also elsewhere: “I was sick and you visited me, come to me all you blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world”. The Lord also says: “For the same measure you measure it will be measured back to you”.
Therefore he who has been thus inspired by the Lord, should consider the sense of such perfect truth, regard this extraordinary means to attain the precious “pearl of charity”, of which the holy Gospel says: “the man who found it, put up for sale all that he had and bought it”. Therefore this “pearl of charity” is that which transforms us in God and purifies us of every strain of sin, because: “charity covers a multitude sins”.
Everyone, therefore, who would like to join our Institute, should know that he must die to himself, if he is given such a great grace by the Holy Spirit and should not worry about death nor life, neither infirmity nor health, but entirely dead to the world, he should give himself completely to the will of God, under perfect obedience to his superiors, giving up totally of his will. He should consider it a great gain to die for the crucified Jesus Christ our Lord, who says: “there is no greater love than to give one’s life for one’s friends”…
Thus renewed he should prepare to suffer a great deal for the glory of God, for the salvation of his own soul and that of his neighbour.
CADIS – BANGKOK
Download here the invitation for the third annual meeting of the leaders of the Camillian Disaster Service International (CADIS) which will take place on 20 November-1 December 2016 in Bangkok at the Camillian Pastoral Care Center. The subject of the meeting will be ‘Constructing the Resilience of Vulnerable Communities through Pathways of Innovations, Partnership and Networking to Achieve our Goals in 2020’.
ROME – THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CAMILLIAN CHAPLAINS
The International Conference of Camillian Chaplains took place on 4-6 November 2016 at the generalate house of the Brothers of Christian Schools (Lassalians) in Rome. This meeting witnessed the participation of forty-two Camillians from twenty-two different countries and centred on the topic ‘The Hospital Chaplaincy at the Heart of Camillian Ministry’.
Read here the accounts of the first, second and third days of the conference and the FINAL DOCUMENT.
TAIWAN
On 22 October 2016, in Lotwung (Taiwan), in the church dedicated to St. Camillus, two Camillian religious of the Delegation of Vietnam who are currently studying theology in Taiwan were ordained deacons: Paolo Hoai and Giuseppe Van. The Archbishop of Taipei presided over the celebration which witnessed the participation of over 300 faithful. After the ceremony, a social lunch was offered to all the participants.
On 29 October, as the last appointment for the Holy Year of Mercy, the Jubilee of Students of the whole of the area of Ilan was celebrated in the Church of St. Camillus in Lotung. More than two hundred people took part, almost all of whom were young. Many activities were engaged in during the afternoon in order to have a deeper understanding of the meaning of the Year of Mercy. On 12 November, the Holy Door of our Church of St. Camillus was closed. The bishop of the diocese had made it a jubilee church. During the course of the Holy Year thousands of people had passed through this door.
PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY
THE PROVINCE OF SICILY AND NAPLES
After twenty-five years, the beautiful Church of Divine Love of the Camillians in the centre of Naples, which goes back to the seventeenth century and is located in Via San Biagio dei Librai, has been given back to the faithful. On the main door is written ‘Padri Crociferi’ (‘Cross-bearing Fathers’) and there is a majolica of St. Camillus. This church is also known as the ‘Church of St. Camillus’.
An expression of thanks to Fr. Alfredo Tortorella and his group of volunteers who organised the work for the reopening of this church.
THE PROVINCE OF THE PHILIPPINES
During the celebrations for the extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, thirty-eight Camillian religious of the Philippines and the Province of Thailand came together for the ‘Camillian Renewal Course’ which was held on 17-22 October at the St. Camillus Pastoral Health-Care Center in Loyola Heights, Quezon City.
Download here the new edition of CamUp – the review of the Province of the Philippines
ROME
We would like to point out to you the exhibition ‘Patria and Religion. Men and Women Religious in the First World War 1915- 1918’ which was inaugurated on 3 November of this year at the Vittoriano, inside the central Museum of the Risorgimento.
About 9,400 Italian religious took part in the Great War from over 40 Congregations. 572 of them became officers, 592 were military chaplains, 362 were wounded, 320 died in the war, and 376 were decorated.
This initiative, the idea of Fr. Giancarlo Rocca, a Pauline and scholar of consecrated life, who also gave a major impulse to the exhibition, is the outcome of the happy cooperation of various religious institutions.
Amongst these there could not fail to be the Order of the Ministers of the Sick (Camillians) which ever since the wars of independence has been with its religious on battlefields at the side of the wounded and the dying.
Pictures and texts make up the fifty-one panels which are on show inside the halls of the Museum of the Risorgimento. The visitor reads anew the events of a hundred years ago as a stage of profound change in realities and awareness.
This is done through the faces and the histories of the very many men and women religious who lived their witness to faith both in hospital services, at the side of men who were wounded and often died because of of the fighting, and as combatants.
Indeed, about ten thousand religious were called to serve in the war and many of them underwent the terrible experience of the trenches, thereby facing questions that affected their most intimate and personal choices.
Especially touching and moving are the testimonies that were written by some of them who, although united in faith, were enemies in war and were forced to kill each other, not of their own free will but because they had to, obeying the atrocious rules of the conflict. One can well imagine the devastation that their consciences had to endure.
Specifically for these reasons, at the end of the First World War the Holy See, by a decree of 15 October 1918 issued by the Sacred Consistorial Congregation, established that all ecclesiastics (priests, seminarians and lay brothers of religious institutes) who had taken part in the war had to follow a course of spiritual exercises before returning to their places of service in order to attend to their consciences and deal with their war experiences. In the gravest cases, it was possible to address the Holy See.
The esteem and gratitude won by the various religious Orders, both male and female, because of the contribution that they made at the front by providing physical and spiritual care to the sick in a terrible context of death and pain, very often paying with their own lives, was notable (Luciana Mellone – the Camillian general archives).
THE PROVINCE OF BRAZIL
The second vocational meeting of 2016 was held at the Pius X community (Cotia, Brazil) on 28-30 October. The subject of the meeting was ‘Responding to my Vocation Starting with Camillian Consecrated Life’ (‘Respondendo a minha vocação, assumindo a Vida Religiosa Consagrada Camilian’).
Our religious Mauricio Gris will be ordained a priest on 17 December. H.E. Odelir Magri will preside over the celebration.
THE DELEGATION IN KENYA
On Sunday 6 November, during the celebration of the sacrament of confirmation with some of the faithful of the parish, Msgr. Philip A. Anyolo, the Bishop of the Diocese of Homabay (Kenya), honoured St. Camillus and the Camillians by dedicating the parish church to our Founder saint. The name of the church was changed from the Parish of St. John the Baptist to the Parish of St. Camillus de Lellis.
PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY
On Saturday 19 November the perpetual professions of four young religious will be celebrated at the St. Camillus Seminary of Nairobi: Dennis Gekondo Atandi; Dominic Mutuku Nthenge; John Mwangi Kariuki; Patrick Kamuya Makau. Fr. Gianfranco Lunardon, the Secretary General of the Order, will also be present.
THE VICE-PROVINCE OF PERU
On 4 November a suffrage Holy Mass was celebrated for Father Giuseppe Villa Cerri, a beloved Camillian priest remembered for his work in the Camillan mission for young people, his work at the Ministry of Health, and his work as a chaplain in Peru. The Holy Mass took place in the afternoon at the ‘CEFOSA’, the St. Camillus Centre for Formation in Health. It was concelebrated by some religious of the Vice-Province and was presided over by Father Enrique Gonzales, the Vice-Provincial Superior.
‘See, now they vanish, the faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them. To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern’ (T.S. Eliot)
GIUSEPPE VILLA CERRI
(1933-2016)
Read here the obituary and the vivid memory of Giuseppe Villa Cerri as expressed by the religious of the Vice-Province of Peru.
‘Now they live in Christ whom they met in the Church, followed in our vocation, and served in the sick and the suffering. Trusting that the Lord, the Holy Virgin our Queen, St. Camillus, the Blessed Luigi Tezza the Blessed Giuseppina Vannini, and our deceased religious brothers and sisters, will welcome them in their midst, we commend them in our prayers, remembering them with affection, esteem and gratitude’.
PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY
THE PROVINCE OF SPAIN
On Friday 21 October, a new post-doctoral master’s degree was inaugurated at the Centro de Humanización de la Salud (CEHS) for 115 students who matriculated last year (2016-17). For the occasion, Br. José Carlos Bermejo gave a paper entitled ‘Resilencia: oportunidades de crecimiento ren la adversidad’.
More than 600 people will take part in the XII Jornadas sobre Duelo organised by the Centro de Humanización de la Salud on 16-17 November.
This time the seminars will take place on a single day, with Friday left for other activities centred around a round table, with the study of real cases accompanied by Marisa Magaña, the director of the centre for listening; a paper on attachment and detachment; and a special activity that will pay tribute to all the participants.
The following will take part in this day as speakers: José Carlos Bermejo, the Director of the Centro de Humanización de la Salud; Marisa Magaña, the head of the St. Camillus CE; Valentín Rodil, the head of Unidad Móvil de Intervención (UMI) Del Centro de Escucha; Alejandro Rocamora, a psychiatrist; Marta Villacieros, the head of the investigation section of the CEHS; Silvia Chaves, the President of the Association of Accident Victims of Germanwings; and Sara Castro, of the CE of Zamora, or Montserrat Esquerda.
ROME – CAMILLIANUM
THE INAUGURATION OF THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2016-2017
Wednesday 23 November 2016
At the chapel of Villa Sacra Famiglia there will be a concelebration of the Eucharist presided over by Fr. Leocir Pessini, the General Moderator of the Camillianum. This will be followed in the ‘Emidio Spogli’ Aula Magna by the greetings of the General Moderator, Fr. Leocir Pessini, and a report on the academic year given by Prof. Palma Sgreccia, the Dean of the Camillianum. The Lectio Magistralis on ‘Amoris Laetitia. Reflections on Education and Love’ will then be given by H.R.E. Msgr. Enrico dal Covolo, the Rector of the Pontifical Lateran University.
THE DIARY OF THE SUPERIOR GENERAL
On 13-20 November, Fr. Leocir Pessini will visit the Camillian communities of the Province of Germany in Germany and Holland.
On 23-25 November he will take part in the six-monthly meeting of the Union of Superior Generals in Rome.
On 23 November to 4 December, together with Fr. Cipriano, he will visit the Camillian religious of Haiti.
On 9-12 December, with Fr. Laurent Zoungrana, he will meet the Camillian religious of the community of Lourdes (France).
THE EXTRAORDINARY JUBILEE OF MERCY
POPE FRANCIS
LAST JUBILEE AUDIENCE
Mercy and Inclusion
At this last Saturday jubilee audience I wold like to describe an important aspect of mercy – inclusion. Indeed, God, in His design of love, does not want to exclude anyone; He wants to include everyone. For example, through baptism He makes us his children in Christ. And we Christians are invited to use the same criterion: mercy is that way of acting, that style, by which we seek to include others in our lives, avoiding closing up in ourselves and our selfish certainties.
In the passage from the Gospel of Matthew that we have just listened to, Jesus makes a truly universal invitation: ‘Come to me all of you are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest’ (11:28). Nobody is excluded from this appeal because the mission of Jesus is to reveal to every person the love of the Father. It is our task to open our hearts, to trust Jesus and to welcome this message of love which makes us enter the mystery of salvation.
This aspect of mercy – inclusion – is expressed in opening our arms so as to welcome without excluding; without classifying other people on the basis of their social condition, language, race, culture, religion: in front of us there is only a person to be loved as God loves that person. The person whom I find in my work, in my neighbourhood, is a person to be loved, as God loves. “But he is from that country, another country, that religion, of another…He is a person who loves God and I must love him”. This is to include, and this is inclusion.
How many tired and heavy-laden people do we meet today as well! In the street, in public offices, in clinics…The gaze of Jesus rests on each one of those faces, through our eyes as well. And how are our hearts? Are they merciful? And is our way of thinking and behaving inclusive? The Gospel calls us to recognise in the history of humanity the design of a great work of inclusion which, fully respecting the freedom of every person, of every community, of every people, calls everyone to form a family of brothers and sisters, in justice, in solidarity and in peace, and to be a part of the Church, which is the body of Christ.
How true are the words of Jesus who invites those who are tired and heavy-laden to come to him to find rest! His arms stretched out on the cross demonstrate that nobody is excluded from his love and mercy, not even the greatest sinner! We are all included in his love and his mercy. The most immediate expression with which we feel welcomed and placed in him is his forgiveness. We all need to be forgiven by God. And we all need to meet brothers and sisters who help us to go to Jesus, to open ourselves to the gift that he made us on the cross. Let us not obstruct each other! Let us not exclude anyone! Indeed, with humility and simplicity let us make ourselves an instrument of the inclusive mercy of the Father! The inclusive mercy of the Father: that is the way it is. The Holy Mother Church prolongs in the world the great embrace of Christ who died and rose again. This square, with its colonnade, also expresses this embrace. Let us involve ourselves in this movement of inclusion for others, to be witnesses to the mercy with which God has welcomed, and welcomes, each one of us!
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