New resources, new steps taken: Salesian Brother,
Mamma Margaret
SUVA: 27th September 2006 -- Bosconet is pleased to offer a range of
new resources to follow up two important events of 2006, one just past,
the other to come: the EAO Brothers' Assembly concluded in August, and
the 150th anniversay of the death of Mamma Margaret in November.
Not from EAO, but from its near neighbour, the South
Asia Region, comes a series of very useful resources on the Salesian
Brother focused on the introduction, in Shillong, of a Diploma Course
in Theology (DCT) for Brothers of that Region. This is the work
of Brother Abraham Antony, currently doing a doctorate in Rome.
Brother Antony has kindly offered EAO and Bosconet the materials he has
prepared, and he has adapted them for publishing on the web. They
are available from Bosconet - you can either go via the usual route to
the Brothers' general material, or the Assembly06 or, for the moment,
to the 'what's new this week' section and click there. All items
are downloadable as a Word file.
We learn from the Philippines that some concrete
steps have been undertaken in the wake of the August Assembly in
Cambodia. Bro Mon writes that in the FIN province (and at times
involving FIS as well), the two monthly meetings with pre and post
novices will resume and the first talk will be about the Salesian
Brother vocation as lived in the EAO region. Quarterly gatherings
of all Salesian Brothers (there are 30 throughout the FIN province
territory, including PNG-SI) have been planned through until May 2007,
and a monthly conference for Brothers has been planned for the
Seminaryo ng Don Bosco where there are currently 4 Brothers (3 Korean 1
Filipino) doing specific formation. We also learn that the Luzon
Association of Salesian Brothers, with Bro Mon as its chairman, will be
holding an Assembly in October titled 'The Passion to tbe Brothers
Today'.
And Mamma Margaret? We know that the excellent
work by Teresio Bosco is available as a well-published item from GBR
Province. The price of this book for the Salesian Family is £5, (plus
postage overseas) available from joan@salesians.org.uk
Some mission areas have found even that text a little long for
the purposes of getting Mamma Margaret's Life into the hands of simple,
good mums in rural mission areas. Accordingly, Bosconet now makes
available a shortened life of Mamma Margaret, written by Fr Joseph
Aubry and largely unknown in the English-speaking world. You will
find it by scrolling down the Bosconet homepage until the very bottom
right under 'Special, Other'. It runs into just 6 A4 pages. A
strong hint: there are two formats available - rtf, which is openable
in Word, and odt which is openable in OpenOffice Writer. If you
choose the latter, ie if you have downloaded the free OpenOffice suite
(and why not, after all it is free), then printing it as a booklet is a
breeze - just go to page orientation and choose 'landscape', then
'options' and click 'brochure' and print! All your page numbers
will be correctly organised for adjacent pages. This version is
now finding its way into Arabic and possibly Tetum.
___________________
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