ROME: 25th January 2005 -- Recent statistics gathered with the help of all the provinces in the East Asia Oceania Region suggest it is a region with some cause for celebration, and certainly for thanking the Lord for his goodness while humbly realising it is his work, not ours that we celebrate.

    The overall numbers of confreres in the region have increased from 1265 in 2003 to 1316 at the end of 2004.  Three provinces recorded a small decrease - a total of seven confreres, but this loss was covered abundantly by large increases in areas like ITM and VIE which together accounted for an additional 47 confreres.

    Two of the nine provinces had no novices for 2004, but across the region there were 76 novices.

    A look at the EAO Region compared with other Salesian regions shows that it is one of three regions on the increase, the other two being South Asia (+51) and Africa (+123).  In terms of overall percentage proportion of the Congregation, EAO represents 7.75%.  The largest region, proportionally speaking, is North Europe at 16.90%, just peaking Italy at 16.82%.  South Asia is the next largest region at 14.59%.  The smallest region (other than UPS) at 6.93% is Africa-Madagascar, but one can see from figures quoted earlier that Africa is fast on the move - it has 16.36% of the novices for 2004 throughout the world (89 novices).

    Statistics aside, there are a number of reasons for inspiration in the EAO Region for 2005: the worldwide Mission focus on Mongolia (DVD etc), the RM's Strenna on rejuvenating the Church, the forthcoming Team Visit with announcements of further developments in North Asia, and may we add here the 1000th edition of austraLasia on 20th January!

    2006 will be no less lacking in moments of inspiration - the celebration of the Centenary of Don Bosco in the Region as represented by the China DB celebrations with the RM's visit to Hong Kong and Macau in February next year.