Present on the Strategy Team call: Clyde (U.S.), Ed (Netherlands), Christina (New Zealand), Peter (Kenya), Don (Brazil), Kochurani (India), Paschal, tried to connect (Australia), and Rene (U.S.) and invited guest Liz Ngambi (Kenya).
Present on the Young Adult call (immediately following the ST call): Michael (Canada), Rachael and Reena (India), Liz Ngambi (Kenya), plus most of the ST members.
Summary:
Don shared that CEBs in Brazil in general are very progressive. Celso Carias, the ISER staff member, invited Don to participate in his CEB just outside of Rio de Janeiro. Celso’s wife conducted the service, blessed the palms, and gave the homily. She vested for the Eucharistic portion of the Mass, raised the host in remembrance of Jesus, and distributed already consecrated hosts to those gathered. He said it was a moving experience. Later in the day, he and Celso attended another prayer service. If this one day in the life of one CEB community is reflective of others, the CEBs in Brazil have much to teach the rest of us.
Celso is excited about CCRI’s offer to broadcast the Londrina meeting and is taking the matter to the appropriate committee heads for further discussion.
Don recommended that we invite Lula (a member of the Aparecida ground team) to join one of our coming ST calls. He speaks both English and Portuguese and invite him to be a translator for the Londrina meeting if we receive the go-ahead to broadcast that meeting via Zoom.
Peter invited Elizabeth Ngambi to our meeting. She is herself a young person who is involved in working with other young people in Nairobi to involve them in the forthcoming Synod on Youth called by Francis. She is planning to send out the letter [http://www.romereports.com/2017/01/13/pope-francis-letter-to-young-people] written by Francis to young people to all the groups with whom she has connections. We discussed the fact that the questionnaire in the packet sent out by the Vatican last January is for Bishops to answer on behalf of the young people in their diocese. It is unclear whether or not a questionnaire from the Vatican intended to be completed by young people is forthcoming. Ed suggested that we need a questionnaire written by young people for young people to complete.
In the follow-up Young Adult meeting, two more young people joined the call, Reena and Rachael from India. They had the opportunity to meet Liz from Kenya. Two outcomes arose from their discussion:
- They agreed that they would like to create a questionnaire addressing the issues of greatest concern to them and to do so cross culturally. Kochurani indicated that Amal, another young person from India who was on last week’s call, would be interested in joining the drafting committee. We would assist them with its drafting and testing and post it on Survey Monkey.
- They would like to explore starting SCCs with and for young people addressing everyday concerns that directly affect their lives.
It was agreed that, with Holy Week here, they would take the next two weeks to begin drafting the questionnaire and they would reconvene the Young Adult meeting in two weeks.
If anyone on the call has details to add to this report, please do so.
Gratefully,
Rene