INDEX
- The next Blessed: Mother Josephine
Catanea of Jesus Crucified
- Commemoration of the death of St John of the Cross
- Continuing insecurity in the area of
Kivu in the Congo
- Change of Secretary for the
Secretariate General of the Nuns
- Improving our News Service
The next Blessed:
Mother Josephine Catanea of
Jesus Crucified
1894-1948
With the signing of the Pontifical Decree on 17th
December, the Order came to know of the approval of the
miracle attributed to this Discalced Carmelite Nun from the
monastery of Santa Maria dei
Monti in
Ponti Rossi, Naples. We can now fill in a few of the
details.
Cardinal Alessio
Ascalesi, Archbishop of the city
where she lived, used to go up every week to talk with the
one he called “the holy nun”. As a result he gave her the
duty of being concerned for the priests. For many of them,
particularly during the second world war, the humble
Carmelite nun was truly a charismatic oracle. At the request
of the Provincial, Fr Romualdo
of St Anthony, she wrote her autobiography (1894 - 1932) and
her diary (1925 - 1945), 1925-1945). She wrote many letters
of exhortation to religious sisters and priests. In 1943,
when physical illness struck her down, she was convinced
that this was “the sickness from God’s will”. This led to a
most painful gangrene which spread throughout her body. This
became the source of great wonder after her death, since her
body remained incorrupt as it awaited burial for nearly two
weeks. Her tomb in the chapel of the Carmelite Nuns is the
destination of continual pilgrimages, mainly of young
married couples.
The miracle examined for the beatification of the Venerable
was the rapid, complete and lasting cure of the two month
old Francesco Natale, who
suffered from “grave encephalitis with
perinatal asphyxia, prolonged convulsive syndrome and
a state of shock”, all of which placed his life in grave
peril. The miracle happened at Naples in 1999. The
Postulator of the Cause for Mother Josephine
Catanea of Jesus Crucified is Fr
Luigi Borriello, a professor at
the Teresianum in Rome and
member of the Naples Province.
Commemoration of the passing of St John of the Cross
Each year, on 14th December, at
Ubeda in Spanish
Andalucia, there is a
celebration of the holy passing of St John of the Cross to
heavenly glory. When he heard midnight sound in the clock
tower of the nearby church, “the saintly Brother John” was
himself, “chanting Matins in heaven”. Every year this event
is celebrated with appropriate ceremony. This year, as part
of the festivities, the XXX St John of the Cross Week took
place as well as the First International Scientific Meeting
on St John of the Cross. Experts on his life and writings
discussed the music in the Spiritual Canticle, St John as a
basis for a culture of life and resurrection, his heart as
an interior mirror in the state of perpetual evolution. An
outstanding conference was given by professor Ana Maria
Schüler on “Mysticism in St John
of the Cross and Zen: what is equivalent and what is
different. Mysticism for our time”.
This year the night of his passing – 13th to 14th
December, was remembered in the same place where he died
with a vigil that was historical, lyrical and musical. The
commemoration concluded with a Mass celebrated by Fr José
Vicente Rodríguez, a noted
international expert on St John of the Cross.
Continuing
insecurity in the area of Kivu
in the Congo
The state of security in the North Kivu
province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
increasingly deteriorates. Since August 2004, the rebels of
Laurent Nkundabatware, the
dismissed general of the Congolese forces, have been
attacking the government forces in the north of the
Kivu province. Since last
September, the Congolese government decided to put an end to
this situation of insecurity in the province and are trying
to get rid of the dismissed general’s troops and positions.
Because of the military clashes, thousands of inhabitants
have fled from their houses. There are tens of thousands of
the population in flight, wandering in the jungle without
any form of assistance. There are thousands of other
displaced people in the refugee camps at
Mugunga and
Bulengo, thirteen km from the city of
Goma on the outskirts of the
Carmelite parish of Goma-Katindo,
where our priests Jean-Pierre Ngemanyi,
Baudouin
Mpanga, Pierre Thadée
Bayi and
Jérôme Paluku are
working. They are young Carmelites from the General
Delegation of the Congo. In the camps more than 43,000
refugees survive. The only thing this number ever does is to
increase each day, in inhuman conditions.
The conditions in this situation effect the whole area:
human lives become totally destroyed, the infrastructures
ruined, ... People live in the uncertainty of what tomorrow
will bring. On the 18th October this year, the
parish of Nyakariba in the
territory of the Masisi, was set
on fire by unknown people. The parish priest was away at an
outstation on pastoral duty. It is not only the rural areas
that suffer from the general insecurity.
In the capital, Goma, the
situation is the same. It was a miracle the Bishop escaped
assassination last October. The insecurity is the same for
individuals and religious communities. How long must we live
in these conditions? Nobody knows! Observers say that the
situation could deteriorate. All of us live surrounded by
destruction, fearing to talk about the present.
The majority of priests from the interior, the mountainous
areas, have taken refuge in Goma.
There, just like here, systematic looting of parishes and
religious communities is frequent and
unforseen. Other priests have fled to unknown places.
Various parishes are closed due to the tremendous and
continuous insecurity. From the 22nd October the
priests in Goma have taken
refuge in the “Maria Mama” centre at
Buhimba, next to the large philosophy seminary. From
there they can observe if the situation is getting better.
How long will they have to remain there? Nobody knows.
A Congolese songster sings in Lingala:
“Na mokili tour
à tour,
lelo ya
yo lobi
ya moninga”
— In this land everyone takes care of everything: today it’s
my turn, tomorrow it will be the turn of my brother”. . .
This is the refrain that orders daily life for the
inhabitants of Goma, leading
thousands of people to a traumatizing psychosis of
desperation and discouragement.
Every day there are armed robberies with the disturbing
knowledge that there is nothing that can be done about the
situation. It is a sign of the daily degradation. This
ongoing robbery or institutionalized plundering is a way of
economic survival in the general chaos. There are thousands
of victims of this barbarity. At nightfall, everyone asks
themselves who will be the next victim. In this way the
general traumatization
increases.
On the night of 10th November, armed men in
military uniform attacked the convent of the
Ursaline sisters at
Tildonk, in the barrio of
Himbi, in the area of our
Carmelite parish. They assaulted the Sisters, wounding one
grievously in the eye. The took away the furniture,
computers, mobile phones, money ... whatever they could find
to hand. Which religious community will be the next victim?
And what will happen if the thieves do not find anything to
take in the houses they are trying to rob? This is our life
in Goma. We can say without any
form of drama: In the present situation the only thing that
counts is to trust totally in Divine Providence and the
protection of Our Lady of Mt Carmel.
Change of Secretary for the
Secretariate General of the Nuns
Since 2003, Fr Ulrich Dobhan has
been Secretary General for the Nuns in the General House. On
21st December he returned for good to his
Province of Germany to be the Prior of our monastery in
Munich. His successor in the office is Fr. Karol
Władysław
Kraj, from the Krakow Province. He is shortly to
defend his doctoral thesis in canon law at the Lateran
University of Rome on the topic of “The Patrimony of the
Discalced Nuns of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of
Mount Carmel in the light of canon 578 and its teachings”.
To improve our News Service
With the arrival of the New Year the new web page of the
General Curia of the Discalced Carmelites will have its
premiere. It will be a newly designed web page with updated
technology, that takes its bow at the service of the Order
and the Church. One of our greatest challenges will be to
present the news of what is happening in the
Teresian Carmel throughout the
world. There are many things to assist this in the new web
site, among the best of these you will find: a renewed
system for sending Communicationes
by Email, a new section for web notices and a reorganization
of the information offered on the web site.
Fr David Jiménez, from Castile
Province, is the craftsman bringing this technical and
electronic work into being. This new site of the General
Curia of the Discalced Carmelites will continue to offer its
contents in five languages (Italian, Spanish, English,
French and German), as it has done up to the present. As
well, with the intention of making it easier to have access
to the various languages, the following addresses have been
provided which come into effect on 1st January
2008:
www.carmelitaniscalzi.com
– Italian
www.carmelitasdescalzos.com – Spanish
www.discalcedcarmelite.com
– English
www.carmesdechaux.com
– French
www.karmeliten.com
– German
All of us at the General Curia of the Discalced Carmelites
invite you to visit our new web site and we wish you all a
Happy New Year.
cfr.
www.carmelitaniscalzi.com
