SVD Formation
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SVD Formation
ASPAC Meeting of the Presidents
of the SVD-Aministered Universities
Thomas Malipurathu, SVD
A
three-day meeting of the presidents of the SVD-aministered universities
of the ASPAC Zone took place at the Holy Name University, Tagbilaran, in
the Philippines (PHS) from the 28th to 30th January 2010. Of our six
universities, five were represented. The President of the Divine Word
University in Madang (PNG) could not participate because of busy
schedule. Besides the presidents, a couple of other major officials of
our two Filipino universities (Holy Name and San Carlos) also took part
in the deliberations. Secretary for Formation and Education, Thomas
Malipurathu, represented the Generalate at the meeting, which took off
with an opening Eucharistic celebration at 10 a.m. on Thursday, January
28th.
One of the main items on the agenda was looking at the possibility of
preparing a set of common guidelines for the six Society-administered
universities in the Zone. There were some sort of an individual set of
guidelines in existence for the three universities of Nanzan (JPN), Fu
Jen (SIN) and San Carlos (PHS). They were formulated way back in 1981 by
Fr. General Henry Heekeren and his council. In the intervening years
there occurred many changes in various spheres rendering most provisions
of those guidelines obsolete or irrelevant. The meeting at Tagbilaran
took a detailed look at the 1981 proposals and tried to bring the
various provisions up-to-date. They will now be articulated in formal
language and forwarded to Fr. Superior General and his council for their
perusal and eventual approval.
A second important item was taking up anew the question of the
“pastoral and missionary slant” of these institutes of higher learning
administered by the Society. Once again the point of departure for the
reflections of the forum was a circular letter of 1981 by the then
Superior General Fr. Henry Heekeren. It was entitled
“Pastoral-missionary Orientation in Our Schools”. Fr. General Antonio M.
Pernia’s comments on this document, which formed part of his address to
the members of the same forum at its last meeting at Madang (PNG) in
2007, provided helpful hints for the deliberations of the group at the
present meeting. The participants noted that the understanding of
mission has changed much since 1981 and with it our preoccupations with
regard to the pastoral and missionary slant of our ministry of
education. The forum readily agreed that the framework against which our
pastoral and missionary slant has to be evaluated today is the
following: Our mission today is to give witness to the inclusiveness of
God’s Kingdom and its openness to diversity which we carry out as a
four-fold prophetic dialogue for which we take the four-fold pathways of
Biblical Apostolate, Mission Animation, JPIC and Communications. The
participants then decided that in the coming months each of the six
universities would initiate a process to evaluate its
pastoral-missionary slant using this framework as a yardstick and
prepare report which will then be forwarded to chairman of the forum,
Fr. Francisco Estepa. A future meeting of the forum will subject the
consolidated report to further study and necessary action.
The host of the meeting, Fr. Francisco Estepa, who is the president
of the Holy Name University, with the active collaboration of a
dedicated group of his colleagues, did a marvelous job in organizing it.
Every detail was superbly attended to. The famed Filipino hospitality
was much in evidence throughout the three-day meeting. The participants
went away with a distinct feeling of having taken another concrete step
in advancing the discourse on the mission we engage in through our
schools and other institutes of higher learning.
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