austraLasia 1087
The 'Brother' story in East
Asia-Oceania
HO CHI MINH CITY: 20th March 2005
-- The immediate locus of this story is Vietnam, where of the 34
novices for this year, 8 have declared themselves ready to profess as Salesian
Brothers, thus giving added strength to one of Don Bosco's cleverest
conceptions, at a time when the worldwide picture of the Salesian Brother has
shown a worrying decrease, but also at a time when this is being met with a
determined plan for promotion of this essential element of the Salesian
vocation by the Rector Major and his Council, most recently as part of the
two Team Visits of SA and EAO.
All of the statistics for the EAO side of
the story can be viewed graphically, or as raw data, from the EAO stats package
available from www.bosconet.aust.com
but, for the record, here is something of the overall picture for the past ten
years.
If we consider the total number of Brothers
in each of the nine provinces, it helps to break them into two groups, those
who are newly professed as Brothers, and those who are perpetually
professed. Obviously a good supply of the former ensures strong numbers
amongst the latter. Perhaps the EAO picture here is of some consolation in
the light of the worldwide scene. Over the ten year period 1994-2004 two
provinces (ITM and THA) have held steady numbers of perpetually professed
Brothers, while two other provinces, KOR and VIE have registered a steady
increase, Korea moving from 12-17 in that period and VIE 13-23. FIS and
GIA have been roughly steady - decrease of just one or two Brothers over the ten
years, leaving three provinces, AUL, CIN and FIN registering a clear
decrease.
However, to balance that picture, the
number of temporarily professed Brothers registered an increase in four of the
nine provinces and remained steady in a fifth if one compares simply 1994 with
2004 (there were fluctuations in between in most cases).
Across the region as a whole, the 10 year
picture is interesting: The total number of perpetually professed Brothers in
the region peaked in 1997 at 154 and has remained at that level until 2004,
fluctuating in minor fashion in between. The number of newly professed
Brothers has fluctuated between a low point of 38 (in 2000) and its highest in
1994 (50). There were 41 in 2004 - 29 of those were in ITM (16), KOR (8)
and VIE (5).
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Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based
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