ROME: 11
January 2012 -- The Mission animation newsletter
'Cagliero11'
celebrates its 3rd birthday today. Why today? There would
hardly be an
austraLasia reader today who does not already have the answer,
but just
in case.... The 11th November 1875 was the day the then Fr Cagliero
was chosen to lead the first missionary expedition to Argentina,
so Cagliero11 takes the 11th of each month as its issue date..
As
Fr Klement described it in the first edition, issued in the
150th year
of the Congregation's existence: "With Cagliero 11 we are
aiming to
reach every Salesian community in the world to remind
ourselves at
least once a month to pray for all our missionaries ad gentes. As we are
thinking of them, we remind ourselves that
we are all called to be ‘missionaries to the young’. In some
provinces,
on the 11th of each month a Mass is celebrated for
missionaries, and
theya re prayed for. This little newsletter could be used for
spiritual
reading, or as a part of Vespers/Evening Prayer.
Towards the end of it you will also find the Salesian Mission
Intention
which follows the general and mission intentions of the Holy
Father –
all this can be found too in www.sdb.org".
So
it might be worth looking at our Region (Which we think,
secretly,
might have been part of the inspiration for this newsletter,
since the
Cagliero Volunteer Group had already started up in the
Australia-Pacific Province!) and how Cagliero11 has featured
here. Of
course it goes out to the whole world, not just our Region,
but our
Region has been prominent in its production and dissemination.
To begin
with, Fr Alfred Maravilla, from PNG but currently completing
his
doctoral thesis and resident in Rome-Pisana, does much of the
initial
work of putting it together each month.
We
know that of the 15 languages into which Cagliero11 is
translated
monthly, five of those are in regular use in our Region:
English,
Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese. Are there others we
have missed?
We
know too that a number of province web sites upload Cagliero11
regularly and that way make it available to communities. This
is
certainly true of CIN, GIA, THA, KOR, and possibly others in
the
Region. Fr Klement himself runs a blog by the same name
which can be
found amongst the Salesian
blogs on sdb.org
One
of the pleasing features of Cagliero11 is the way it has gone
a long
way towards its principle aim - to find its way into every
community
around the world and be used in a variety of ways, not just
for
information. While it would still be well short of being
in every
community, it has become a standard feature in many, often
finding its
way onto the refrigerator door, or being used as part of
Evening Prayer
on 11th of each month. Fr Klement receives many comments
based on
articles, so it has also become a good communication tool. He
would
like to respond to the many suggestions to do this or that,
improve
aspects of production and distribution - but it all takes time
and
effort. He'll get there!
So, congratulations Cagliero11 and happy birthday!
