SVD confreres have been gathering in Australia, New Zealand and Thailand for Local Chapter meetings, where they report on their ministries, highlights and challenges ahead of the AUS Provincial Chapter meeting in Sydney in June.

Provincial Local Chapter Coordinator, Fr Asaeli Raass SVD, says the meetings are an important component of providing input from Divine Word Missionaries “on the ground” in a wide variety of ministries and activities.

“The Local Chapters are all about bringing together the local level issues and also exercising some kind of co-responsibility with the Province,” Fr Raass says.

“They are an opportunity to come together from the various parishes, ministerial places, apostolates and record what has been happening as well as identify areas where they might see a need into the future.

“It is also a time for attending to some of the personal issues of each and every individual confrere.”

Fr Raass says each Local Chapter meeting is headed by the Local Superior and confreres are invited to share openly about their life and mission, complete with all the struggles, highlights and good news stories.

“One of the issues on the table for all Local Chapters is to attend to the Congregational Directions (2012) provided by the SVD Generalate in Rome and to come up with a concrete action plan to incorporate those Directions into their particular ministries,” he says.

The Directions are concerned both with the inner life of the congregation, in areas such as spirituality, community, leadership, finance and formation, as well as the outward, missionary aspects of SVD activity.

Fr Raass says the AUS Province has identified five of those Congregational Directions to concentrate on. They are: ecumenical and interreligious dialogue; primary and new evangelisation; indigenous and ethnic communities; migration and refugees; and social justice and poverty eradication.

“So the Local Chapters are a chance for our confreres to really put their thinking caps on and wrestle with how we might implement those Directions until 2019,” he says.

“It’s an opportunity for local districts to really extend their wings and concentrate not only on their particular ministry, but to think about the common orientation that we as SVDs should be concentrating on.

“It’s a matter of prioritising the needs of the local people as well as the Directions that the leadership in Rome have come up with for all SVD brothers and priests.”

Each Local Chapter, in Thailand, New Zealand, Northern Territory, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, will now send the minutes of their meeting to the Provincial Council for them to study their proposals and recommendations before they are taken up by the Provincial Chapter, to be held in Sydney in June.

PHOTO: Local Chapter meeting in the Northern Territory District.