austraLasia #2172

Pakistan - interesting insights

LAHORE-QUETTA: 12th June 2008 --  The flying visit by Fr Peter Zago, superior of the Salesian presence in Pakistan, and a communication from one of the two professed Pakistani Salesians studying in the Philippines, has provided some interesting and hopeful perspectives on a nation which has not been without its very public difficulties over recent months.
    Essentially, the message from Fr Zago is one of a gradual and hope-filled consolidation of a Salesian presence which will, in August, celebrate its first ten years of existence.  It involves Salesian missionaries from the EAO region and well beyond, an international presence that has grown from just one resident Salesian to five, with promise of more to come, and which has seen the development of two large, complex, very different and certainly outstanding (in the eyes of Pakistani authorities, as well as our own) educational institutions.  It has also seen the careful selection and training of potential Salesian candidates, resulting now in two professed Salesian candidates for priesthood and others at candidacy and novitiate stages. Considerable effort and prayer is also being put into encouraging Salesian Brother vocations.
    In the ways that God seems to like writing straight with crooked lines, the Afghanistan situation and the Kashmir-Western Frontier earthquake several years back have been catalysts for Salesian response and recognition.  In Quetta, local Pakistani authorities hold up the Don Bosco presence as a model of how 'community' can work in a multi-racial, multi-national, multi-religious and often refugee context.  In Lahore the authorities praise and recognise the quality of technical education offered as well as the inclusive nature of the presence. In the mountainous post-earthquake zone 'Don Bosco' is synonymous with re-construction and good will, and at least one new school in the area bears the name.
    But for a rather good visual impression of all this - and for practically every reader of austraLasia a 'first' look at this now developed set of two Salesian presences, I recommend you take a look at the two 5 minute 'movies' produced by Bro Eric Maalik, completing his philosophical studies at Canlubang, Philippines. Eric has obviously some talent in this area and has constructed the movies (you'll need Quicktime; they are .mov) from dozens of photos.  The two movies (one on Lahore the other on Quetta), are also on SDL, but at 40 Mb a pop they would not be easily downloaded on poor bandwidth. In the case of Bro Eric's own location of these two items, they are streamed, so much easier to deal with. However, for someone wanting to present Salesian work in Pakistan to a class or in a parish group, it would be worth downloading them from SDL (English collection, under the 'Missions' tag, in which case click on the icon with the question mark, not the 'text' icon - it's a movie after all!).
    For the streamed versions, go to http://ericdb2003.multiply.com/video/item/13/Don_Bosco_Quetta.mov
and
http://ericdb2003.multiply.com/video/item/10/Don_Bosco_Lahore.mov
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 AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific.  It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome.  For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - just go to Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2008 in the sidebar. You will see the RSS orange icon in your browser address bar - add it from there.  Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org

Title: australasia 2172
Subject and key words: EAO Provinces FIS Pakistan
Date (year): 2008
ID: 2000-2099|2172