Chapter Communication – 24th May 2022

MINISTRY INTEGRITY

Stéphane Joulain gave an overview of the initiatives of the last six years in the field of ministry integrity, both at the level of society as a whole and at the level of the provinces. He assisted the provincials and provincial delegates in their work of animating the confreres in this area. He has organised training sessions on the integrity of the ministry for our Society, in our houses of formation, for episcopal conferences and religious communities. He teaches in universities and is a member of some consultation committees. He pointed out that confreres trained by him have organised sessions in their respective provinces and sectors and for Christian communities. Little by little, the work of awareness is bearing fruit. He insisted on the need to create a board of advisors to follow up cases, on the usefulness of a canonist for our Society, the obligation to denounce cases of abuse and to collaborate with the civil authorities, and of course the responsibility to help the victims. Prevention is a crucial element of the ministry integrity.

The role of the delegate for the protection of minors and vulnerable persons is advisory to the general council in the management of cases of abuse. He keeps up to date with the evolution of official documents of the Church and other institutions.

In the second part of his intervention, Father Joulain shared the results of the online audit conducted last year at the request of the General Council. The purpose of the exercise was to evaluate the implementation of the policy of protection of minors and vulnerable persons throughout the Missionaries of Africa Society and assess the elements listed above. As a Society, where are we in our commitment to protect victims and combat this scourge?

SECOND PLENARY

The six teams shared the themes that they felt were essential to them. Here are some of them: sharing our charism with the laity, formation, Justice and Peace, Integrity of Creation, Encounter and Dialogue, the brothers, our commitment today as missionaries of Africa. All these topics are placed under a larger banner: prophetic mission today. Then there was the gathering of topics related to each other.

At the end of the session, Sr Begoña addressed the capitulants, expressing her joy for the collaboration between our two missionary congregations and for being an observer at the Chapter.