First Annual Claretian Coordination Meeting for China

Claretians working in China along with some speakers, including the bishop of Macau Msgr. José Lai, the Vatican Charge d’Affairs Msgr. Eugene Nugent and the Rector of the IIUM Dr. Ruben Cabal.

Also in the picture: Claretian Fathers and Brothers Vicente Sanz, Marcel.li Fonts, Renato Manubag, Vincenzo Lee, Francisco Carin, Alberto Rossa, Mario Bonfaini, Peter Chao, Paulo Joo, Desiderio Ching, Jojo Ancheril. And Fr. Michael J. Sloboda MM (speaker) and Mr. Francis Yang (speaker).


The main event of this month has been the First Annual Claretian Coordination Meeting for China. Claretians working in China and their superiors gathered in Macau for 3 days of evaluation, consultation and projections for our new China mission. We realized that in the last year we had made great progress and many possibilities are still opening up for us.

The Macau community presented our “mission” statement:

- Evangelization in China is the responsibility
of the local Church.
- As missionaries we go only where we
are invited for specific, temporary tasks.
- We use all possible means including publications,
internet, language schools and others.
- We have opted to work in the open, therefore
always with a transparent agenda and permissions.

We want to share with you the life and joy we experience working in China. As you can imagine, the meeting was very rich in reports, experiences, dialog, etc. We have too many beautiful things to share. Our space in this blog is limited so we prepared a special web page especially for you with summary reports, powerpoints, etc. If interested please go to: www.bible.claret.org/macauzhuhai

Claretians in Beijing

Our missionaries shared with us realities, opportunities and challenges: What is most urgent, opportune and effective – a new way of Claretian living and presence.

· Our mission in China has to be in accord with the local Church and within the bounds of the law of the country. Foreign priests cannot engage in any active priestly ministry. This is one reality a Claretian priest in China has to be aware of and accept, and so he has to find other ways of missionary presence and activity, for example, as a teacher or an expert in certain fields, or simply as a working professional.

· Possible ministries in the local Church:
– seminars to parishes to help in training lay leaders and evangelizers,
– resource persons or consultants for congregations of sisters,
– teaching jobs in seminaries and formation centers,
– follow up of the Parish Library program started by Alberto Rossa,
– or simply as working professionals, but active parishioners on Sundays.

Beijing is a very big metropolis, so to go from our house in Shangdi to the seminary in Daxing usually takes 2 hours by bus. With the work of Paco and Sid at present, and counting the number of hours they have to travel, they realize that they have to live their community life in a way different from what we could traditionally call life in common. Community life in a vast area as Beijing and with diverse ministries becomes more like that of an itinerant community, but with a fixed residence to go home to.

Mission Procure

Our work in China is an investment of the “three Ts”: our TIME, TALENTS and TREASURE. We do this for the love of God and neighbor – as St. Paul says: “Woe to me if I do not evangelize!”

We need dedicated missionaries and also financial support to carry on with this mission. So we need to strengthen our “China Mission Procure” for the building up and strengthening of local churches in China, for evangelization which focuses on training and formation, and to support Claretian projects in China. The center of this mission procure will be in Macau. We need your support! Thanks!!!

More Visitors

Fr. Jesus Breña, SJ, a well known Jesuit who has spent many years serving the Chinese Church. He has written some books and published them in English, Spanish and Chinese. Claretian Publications is very pleased to publish Fr. Jess books, especially in Chinese and English. This is entirely a non-for-profit endeavor and we are pleased to have this share mission with our brother Jesuit. Fr. Jess is also donating many books for the seminaries in China.

Quanquan Chen is a young Chinese man. The Pastoral Bible Foundation is sponsoring his studies in the Philippines for 6 months while he prepares to enter the university. He spent two weeks with our brothers in Beijing and another two weeks in Macau trying to perfect his English.

Fr. Huang Yu Tao visited us in Macau on his way to the Philippines. Fr. Huang will study Missiology at ICLA. We are very thankful to the institute for providing a scholarship for his studies. Fr. Huang has been the coordinator in China of our Parish Library project, a job that now will be coordinated from our Macau office.

Ms. Cuca Carín. Cuca is the sister of Fr. Paco who is now in Beijing. She spent one year as a Claretian volunteer in Chennai, India working in our missions and helping in some social projects. On her way back to Spain she visited us in Macau and Zhuhai. We will be very pleased if she could join us for a year or so and help us organize our mission procure… Welcome Cuca!

Michael Li Hailu. Michael has undergone religious formation in the Philippines for some years and now comes to Macau to give us a helping hand with many of our projects, especially those that require knowledge of Chinese language. Welcome Michael!

Other News

A group of about 60 Filipino engineers work in the border city of Zhuhai that is already part of Mainland China. We were able to put them in touch with a local priest and now they are very pleased to have an English Mass in Zhuhai – there is no more need for them to cross the border to celebrate Mass on Sunday.

A Blessed Easter to All Our Friends!

Divine de Leon, a Lay Claretian who worked many years with Claretian Publications in the Philippines and is now part of the Macau team, keep saying that the days are running very fast in Macau… it seems that the week is gone as soon as we begin it. In short, plenty of work and doing it all with great joy in our hearts.

Let me share some of the most relevant news of the past weeks.

Our Macau community grows…

New Personnel

Last March 9, Fr. Jojo Ancheril, a young Claretian from India joined our community. He comes full of enthusiasm and on March 26 Fr. Jojo started his classes at the Royal Foreign Language School in Zhuhai (China) – very near our Macau residency: 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. The official language in China is Mandarin; but Cantonese is spoken in this area by about 75 million people.

On March 23, we were again blessed with the arrival of Claretian Fr. Peter Zhao Songqiao. Fr. Peter was born in China but his family moved to Taiwan. Fr. Peter is Chinese and has taught in China and Taiwan for many years. He does not want us to say that he holds a Master and a Doctorate in pastoral ministry. He has already been accepted as Professor at IIUM (the Catholic University in Macau). Meanwhile his Jesuit friends want him to accompany them to give some seminars in China as well. Fr. Peter already has a full load of work. Welcome to our team!

New apartment

We were doubting about placing or not the picture below… All of you might want to come and spend some time in this corner of heaven! Yes, this is our chapel in the apartment that a friend rented to us in Zhuhai. Zhuhai is the border city with Macau and is part of Mainland China. We can cross the border in 15 minutes from our house in Macau. So we should now say: Our Macau-Zhuhai Residencies.

We are moving...

Parish Libraries – Sister Parishes

We shared with you this project in our past bulletins. The news today is that several “Sister Parishes” are responding and beginning a dialogue of life and sharing between a parish in China and a sister parish in other country. The last four partners come from Claretian parishes in Malaga and Canary Islands (Spain) and from Claretian Fr. Mario Bonfaini in Taiwan. As you can imagine, the list of parishes in China is quite long… we need the solidarity of more “sister parishes!”


Chinese Daily Gospel 2008

This project is getting into shape with the help of Chinese friends who are joining us to make it happen. The book is in the “oven” right now. It will be “cooked” in a couple of months. Here is one sample page…

Pastoral Bible Foundation Update

The Spirit of Fr. Bernardo…

Fr. Bernardo Hurault (born in France) is the author of the famous Christian Community Bible, now in 12 languages and more than 60 million copies in print. The last 18 years of his life he worked in close contact with the Claretians and helped in the creation of the Pastoral Bible Foundation.

With his brother, also a priest, Fr. Louis Hurault, and a group of friends, Fr. Bernardo started a small foundation in France for the help of distribution of the Bible in Asia, especially China. He lived very poorly all his life. Two years after his death, PBF received his inheritance. We are humbled by this gesture and we commit to make his dream a reality for the Chinese Christians. We also thank Fr. Louis and friends for their continuous generosity in the service of the Word.

No more bibles…

At the beginning of this year we printed over 100,000 copies of the new Spanish Pastoral Bible, La Biblia de Nuestro Pueblo. It is a co-edition with Mensajero from Spain. But run out of copies very soon…again. Now we are printing once more the same number of copies at Amity, in Nanjing, China. Last year this press printed more than 500,000 books for the Pastoral Bible Foundation (PBF), whose headquarters are here in Macau. PBF is also part of our work.

Translations…

This is a big call. We continue our work with Chinese translators working in several countries. Recently Bro. John Mi Shen sent us the translation of the pastoral commentaries of Genesis. Here is a sample… (easy, right?).


We have a long list of translations from English into Chinese. We are also very interested in bringing Chinese writers and theologians to the knowledge and readership of other parts of the Church.


Bilingual New Testament in Vietnamese

Soon after launching the Pastoral Bible in Vietnamese, Claretian Fr. Angelito “Lito” Ancla, PBF representative in Vietnam, is publishing a bilingual edition of the New Testament: English – Vietnamese.- - - - - -


More bilingual editions… This time of the Four Gospels

We know Mr. Roger Butland by email only. This person from New Zealand contacted us for a partnership in a project to print the Four Gospels in many languages: English (always) accompanied by other language. The list is already calls for about 20 different languages. Mr. Butland started the “Xaverian Charitable Trust” to carry out this pastoral project. To a commercial edition will follow another one that will be distributed totally for free:
- To migrant workers and undocumented workers;
- To the homeless;
- To men and women in penal institutions and incarcerated young people.
The first volume to appear is the Spanish – English edition.

The Pastoral Bible and the Beijing Olympics

China’s official English newspaper, China Daily, brought a news some days back that other agencies around the world immediately followed: UCAN is one of them:

UCAN: Catholic leaders arrange pastoral care for ‘08 Beijing Olympics
(view link)

BEIJING(UCAN) -- With about 500 days to go until the Beijing Olympic Games, Catholic leaders in China are making arrangements to meet the religious needs of foreign Christian athletes and visitors.
Anthony Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), recently put forward a proposal to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) to "provide English-language bibles in hotels." Liu, a CPPCC member, made the proposal during the annual meeting here of the conference, the top advisory body of China's central government.
The theme of the Beijing Olympics 2008 is: One World – One Dream. What about: One Word – One Dream! Well… not bad to introduce “The official Bible of the Beijing Olympics!”.