Madang: 37 participants representing the different congregations of men and women were part of the 30th Annual General Meeting of the Federation of Religious (FOR).
Held from 15th to 19th February, the week-long meeting was enriched by the speakers who shared their thoughts on the theme: "Consecrated Life at the service of God's mission".
Present as speakers at the program were the Apostolic Nuncio, Abp. Kurian Mathew Vayalunkal; Bp Gilles Cote, Bishop of Daru-Kiunga; Bp Rozario Menezes, Bishop of Lae; CBC General Secretary, Fr Giorgio Licini PIME; Fr. Victor Roche, Secretary for New Evangelization and Pontifical Mission Society.
Abp Vayalankal challenged the religious to be true religious by staying with God, living for God and living in God.
Fr. Victor spoke on the challenges facing the Catholic Church in PNG/SI and the solutions to the challenges. He emphasized, for the religious, to do more on the evangelization aspect of the people vis a vis the social work of the mission. He also talked about the challenges of increasing cultural diversity among religious communities and the method on how to resolve differences and build an intercultural community.
Bp Rozario made the religious understand the different energies at work when making decisions in life and how to harmonize them. It could be a decision by emotions (mobile), by obligations (bound), and by choice or convictions (autonomous). Other inputs were also from Fr. Giorgio, on the structure of the CBC of PNG/SI and Bp Gilles Côté on Right Relationship.
The meeting concluded with a talk on the giftedness of the consecrated life to the Church particularly in PNG/SI and a Holy Mass by His Eminence Sir John Cardinal Ribat.
The participants were very happy and had a good impression of the meeting despite the pandemic. At the end of the meeting, the participants visited the Provincial House of the SVDs and Divine Word University while celebrating the 125th anniversary of the SVDs presence in PNG.
