On the cover: on the left, St. Camillus and St. John of God at the bedside of a sick man (altar piece – Venice-Lido). On the right: St. Camillus blesses the Hospital della Ca’ Granda (spire of the Duomo of Milan).
A call to commemorate the feast of the camillian martyrs of charity – may 25, 2018
Gregorio Guglielmi, San Camillo de Lellis assiste gli appestati, Città del Vaticano, Musei Vaticani
On February 2, 1994, the Order of the Ministers of the Infirm had officially instituted May 25 as the Day of the Camillian Religious Martyrs of Charity. The day also commemorates the birth of St. Camillus de Lellis (May 25, 1550).
The Day of the Camillian Religious Martyrs of Charity is a commemoration of the heroic life of more than 300 Camillians (seminarians, oblates, novices, brothers, and priests) who died in serving the victims of plagues in Italy, Spain, Hungary and Croatia during the first four centuries of the life of the Order. This is an exemplary witnessing of the “fourth vow of the Camillians,” that is, service to the sick “even in danger to my own life”.
THE PROVINCE OF AUSTRIA
Prayer meeting of the Community of Camillian Catholic Doctors in Budapest
On 7 April 2018, in Budapest, at the Semmelveis University Clinic of Medicine, a meeting took place of the Lay Camillian Family of Hungary and the ‘Heal the Sick’ Community of Camillian Catholic Doctors. Its purpose was to pray for the sick and for the medical doctors who work inside the institution.
The meeting was held inside a chapel dedicated to St. Camillus inside the hospital complex that was inaugurated almost a year ago with a celebration of the Eucharist presided over by His Eminence Cardinal Erdö Péter.
During the Holy Mass the ‘Heal the Sick’ Community of Camillian Catholic Doctors received as a member Prof. Prim. Dr. Szathmári Miklós, the creator of the St. Camillus Chapel. The celebration was presided over by Fr. Alfréd György M.I., the General Delegate of the Province of Austria.
In this atmosphere of prayer, the importance of having a place to which one can ‘retreat’ to pray, and where examples of faith and of charity such as St. Camillus can be found, was emphasised. As a wounded healer, Camillus transmitted the burning love of the Lord through service to those in need. And in experiencing healing, nearness to illness, we, too, can be a presence that transmits the saving force of faith and burning charity through the charism that has been given to us.
VICE PROVINCIA DEL PERÙ
Vi invitiamo a scaricare il periodico mensile della struttura dei confratelli camilliani della vice provincia del Perù – Hogar San Camilo .
CAMILLIANS, the Daughters of St. Camillus, and the women Ministers of the Sick of St. Camillus – LUCCA
The ‘St. Anne’ Parish Camillian Mission – Lucca ‘the joy of taking care of people’
At Lucca, during the fourth week of Lent (11-18 March 2018), in the Parish of St. Anne, in synergy with the Camillians and the Daughters of St. Camillus, a parish Camillian mission was organised on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Blessed Maria Domenica Brun Barbantini, the founder of the women Ministers of the Sick of St. Camillus.
Journeying towards a community that looks around it…mission accomplished!
We continuously hear it said that these are difficult times for the Church: Christians are decreasing in number, a religious sense increasingly gives way to worldliness, faith seems to be something for the chosen few or for those especially involved through their work, a sort of dehumanisation is at work, relationships fade, as does mutual welcome, and individualism rules. Yet with all of this, in the local area of Lucca various realities still exist, such as the small towns and villages of the Garfagnana or the countryside, where various ways of coming together still exist, where people still know each other and greet each other, and where the identity of being a town or a village still exists. The city milieu is very different. Lucca is a small city and the greatest density of inhabitants is to be found in the outskirts. The neighbourhood of St. Anne is the largest in the outskirts and has about 11,000 inhabitants in what is a very varied local area from the residential blocks to the liberty streets and from the council houses to the courts typical of past centuries. Differently from small inhabited centres, in the neighbourhood of St. Anne a social collage does not exist and there is a great tendency to the anonymous and individualism, to diffidence; the terrain for evangelisation is drier and stonier.
With these premisses, rather than closing ourselves up in our parish organisations we accepted the invitation of Sister Assunta Di Salvo of the women Ministers of the Sick to celebrate the Camillian Parish Mission from Sunday 11 March to Sunday 18 March on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Blessed Maria Domenica Brun Barbantini, of our city, who founded the Congregation of the Women Ministers of the Sick of St. Camillus. This mission was directed above all to people who suffer in body and spirit, to elderly people who are often on their own. In recent mornings, some Camillian religious, accompanied by women Ministers of the Sick, by extraordinary ministers of the communion, and by various lay people, visited more than a hundred elderly people or sick people who are unable to move around.
Read here
The women Ministers of the Sick of St. Camillus – ROME
On 22 May 2018, at the generalate house of the women Ministers of the Sick, in Rome, a solemn Eucharist will be celebrated in honour of the Blessed Maria Domenica Brun Barbantini, the founder of the Institute, on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of her death.
THE PROVINCE OF SICILY AND NAPLES
In the footsteps of the Blessed Maria Domenica Brun Barbantini – a Pilgrimage to Lucca and Viareggio by the postulants of the Province of Sicily and Naples
A pilgrimage means putting oneself on a journey to search for oneself, to live in a concrete way the compelling need for conversion, and to grow in the love of God looking at saints as a model, at those who before us experienced the hard work of this journey and who as searchers became instead discovered, looked for and found by Christ, so as to them be ready to demonstrate to their brethren the beauty of this encounter. The journey travelled by us postulants of the Province of Sicily and Naples in the footsteps of the Blessed Maria Domenica Brun Barbantini in the places where she was born, this year of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of her death, took place specifically within such a framework. From 4 April to 7 April, during a full week in Albis, we experienced the joy of Easter and met the shining light of the Risen Jesus, embodied in the life and the charism of this Blessed from Lucca, our older sister in following Christ according to the charism of St. Camillus.
PROVINCIA DELLE FILIPPINE
Camillus, who was also in addiction with vices in this world can came to his senses saying ” No more of this world,” the Camillian Philippine Province opened a drop-in-center, a home for people who use and inject drugs who also would like to experience conversion through the offer of LOVE and HOPE by our Risen Lord. Upholding the value of life, treasuring the value of conversion and family, this HOME OF HOPE offers health promotion, medical and surgical and psychospiritual and social services through the collaborative partnerships with government & non-government agencies specially a community of people who used drugs and are inspired to reach-out and help their community. The celebration started with the Holy Eucharist presided by Bp. Oscar Florencio, DD, auxilliary bishop of Archdiocese of Cebu and Diocesan Administrator of Military ordinariate with Fr. Socrates Saldua, Director of Caritas Cebu and Fr. Rodolfo “Dan” V. Cancino Jr, MI of the Camillian Philippine Province, Secretariat on Ministry. The celebration was attended by more than 135 guests from different international, nationla and local government and NGOs. St. Camillus…
pray for us.
Anniversary Camillian Family Laica Australia
On Palm Sunday, Lay Camillian Family – Australia celebrated its fourth anniversary with Holy Mass at Westmead General Hospital Chapel (Sydney) followed with lunch at the Merrylands Club.
At our LCF 2018 March meeting, it was agreed to celebrate our time together, since commencement at Sacred Heart Parish, Westmead, in 2014, with formation led by our Spiritual Assistant, Fr Marcelo Jr Pamintuan MI and commissioning in the presence of the Camillian Fathers including our current Provincial, Fr Jose Elojos MI, then on the Feastday of the Annunciation of Our Lord.
The Lay Camillians joined the small congregation at the weekly Sunday Mass at Westmead Hospital concelebrated by Fr Marcelo and Mathew. Fr Reggie joined the congregation.We gave thanks to God for the opportunity to pray together as we commence Holy Week 2018.
Following Mass, members of the Lay Camillian Family with relatives and friends together with Camillian Fathers Marcelo, Reggie, Domingo and Mathew (visiting from India), attended the Merrylands Club to enjoy a sumptuous lunch.
A special thanks to the LCF Executive and members for ensuring we have an enjoyable time together.
THE PROVINCE OF SPAIN
The communications office of the Camillian Province of Spain has renewed its web site www.camilos.es. This is now a more modern portal where we can learn more about the life, the work, the activities and the mission of the Spanish Province and the Order in the world.
THE PROVINCE OF NORTH ITALY
The Message of the Superior General, Fr. Leocir Pessini, to the religious of the Camillian Province of North Italy at the end of his pastoral visit (4-28 March 2018).
THE PROVINCE OF NORTH ITALY – Camillian pastoral care for young people and vocations
Download here the events organised by the Province of North Italy for the discovery of the spirituality of St. Camillus that will take place at the Camillian communities of Mottinello and Piossasco in June and July 2018.
THE PROVINCE OF BRAZIL
Download here the e-book of the Camillian Province of Brazil on the life and the spirituality of St. Camillus
THE CAMILLIAN DELEGATION IN TAIWAN
Fr. Bruno Nespoli, the Camillian Provincial Superior of North Italy, in the week following Easter 2018 animated the spiritual exercises for the Italian-speaking religious who live and work in Taiwan.
Agenzia Fides: ASIA/TAIWAN – the Camillians in Asia: ‘The Life of the Spirit Journeys in Mission’
Loudong (Agenzia Fides) – “The Camillian missionaries today in Asia have the same joy and enthusiasm that existed during the first years of mission. They are involved in teaching the catechism, in pastoral work in very remote areas, and in very many charitable works such as nurseries, hospitals, centres for elderly people and the disabled, and cultural centres; they are present in seminaries for the training of future priests and missionaries of the Gospel, to be sent to other countries in the world as well”. This is what Father Luigi Galvani, a Camillian missionary in Flores, Indonesia, said to Agenzia Fides about the experiences of Camillian missionaries in Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia, who in recent days came together in Loudong, in Taiwan, to address the subject ‘The Charism of St. Camillus and Mission’. “The missionaries who were present have found in the charism of St. Camillus, centred around service to the sick and the poor, the inspiration and the strength to dedicate the best of themselves to missionary work”, he told Agenzia Fides.
MEETINGS OF THE ORDER OF CAMILLIANS (2014 – 2020)
DOWNLOAD THE PDF HERE
THE CAMILLIANUM – Rome
The defence of health. A seminar week will be organised on 9-13 April whose point of departure is the encyclical letter Populorum Progressio of Pope Paul VI.
Seminar: THE SOCIAL QUESTION IS A MORAL QUESTION
‘The social question is a moral question’. This is how the encyclical Populorum progressio of the Blessed Paul VI begins. This document remains of contemporary relevance in its analysis: ‘Human society is sorely ill. The cause is not so much the depletion of natural resources, nor their monopolistic control by a privileged few; it is rather the weakening of brotherly ties between individuals and nations’ (n. 66).
This interdisciplinary seminar will pay attention to two questions: inequality is not a calamity that is beyond our responsibilities but the result of our political and economic decisions and these have to be redirected starting with the defence of the common good. The management of health care, which is a common and relational good, can help us to hold up new pathways of solidarity and sharing.
READ HERE THE ARTICLE OF AGENSIR
Course of advanced formation THE PASTORAL CARE OF TREATMENT AND HEALTH. Edition 2018.
This course, which has an interdisciplinary methodology, has the goal of promoting the Christian culture of treatment and health which places the totality of the human person at the centre of things.
Health involves all the crucial factors of existence: not only the biological ones but also the anthropological, the spiritual, the psychological, the socio-cultural and the economic ones. An experience of vulnerability raises questions concerning help that find an answer in the socio/health-care field but it also opens up questions of meaning that call on theology and philosophy.
This course on the pastoral care of treatment and health is committed to providing conceptual instruments that are suited to promoting pastoral care in health in the contemporary pluralist cultural context which is in need of trust and hope (from the Presentation).
Overall duration of the course: 3 months: 20 hours over 9 weekends from April to June 2018.
Date by which enrolments must be made: 3 April 2018
At the Camillianum a Course on Digital Health Humanities
The principal goal of this course is to promote the Christian civilisation of care during the digital era, providing training in the technologies and the management of this new approach in health-care systems.
Starting on 28 April, there is still time to enrol in the course of advanced formation on ‘digital health humanities’ organised by the Lateran Studies Centre and the Camillianum Institute in cooperation with the Knights of St. Camillus. Electronic health care ‘constitutes a combined use of information and communication technologies, in particular Internet, applied to the health-care sector, in both presence and distance form (in this case one is dealing with telemedicine). Being in a network – write the organisers – is to change the way we are as patients and as medical doctors, and how we see ourselves as the health-care sector’.
THE DIARY OF THE SUPERIOR GENERAL AND THE GENERAL CONSULTA
On 24 April 2018, in Rome, at Villa Primavera of the Handmaidens of the Incarnation, the Superior General and the members of the General Consulta will meet the Camillian Charismatic Family: the leading figures and the council members of the Daughters of St. Camillus, the women Ministers of the Sick, the Handmaidens of the Incarnation, and the Secular Institute of Women Missionaries of the Sick – ‘Christ the Hope’!
In May 2018 Fr. Leocir Pessini will pay a pastoral visit to the religious of the Camillian communities of the Province of Poland.
MEETING OF THE SUPERIOR GENERAL, THE MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL CONSULTA AND THE MAJOR SUPERIORS OF THE ORDER IN TAIWAN
Lotung, 18-22 June 2018
Together in Asia to learn, to celebrate and to peer into the future, so as to re-motivate the Camillian missionary spirit
Why are we together here in Taiwan? The hope is that this can be a moment to learn and to give thanks at the same time as the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival of the Camillians in China (Taiwan).
- To explore the various social, cultural and religious aspects of this region of Asia.
- To address some special dimensions of Buddhism and its relationship with the Church.
- To foster exchange and fraternity amongst those taking part (the whole of the day of 19 June) in order to assess the potentialities of the presence of the Camillians in Asia: on 19 June 2018 all the Camillian representatives of Asia, of India, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia, with Fr. Luigi Galvani or others, will be invited to present their perspectives on the realities, the challenges and the prospects for the future of the Camillians. Following this there will be an opportunity for an exchange of opinions and strategies.
- To share internal communications about the Order (exchanges about the initiatives of individual Provinces) and the different areas of responsibility of the General Consult (financial administration, formation, secretariat, ministry).
- To present the physiognomy of the Vice-Province of Benin-Togo as we look forward to it acquiring the status of a Province (probably in September 2018).
- To assess the efficacy of the document on inter-Provincial cooperation, given that the sending of Camillian religious ‘towards Europe’ continues to take place and that it is not always the case that the agreements between the Province that sends and the Province that receives, or simply the Province that hosts the religious in its own area (in this case the religious who are sent work with a diocese), are clear. Indeed, at times they are a source of misunderstanding.
DECEASED RELIGIOUS
‘See, now they vanish, the faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them. To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern’ (T.S. Eliot).
FATHER ARTURO TAIT (1926 – 2018)
Arturo Tait was born on 12 November 1926 in Mezzolombardo (TN). His father was Augusto Tait and his mother was Emma Matuella. He entered the seminary of Villa Visconta in Besana Brianza (MI) on 16 October 1940. In 1943 he continued with his studies at the primary school in Mottinello di Rossano Veneto (VI). He did his novitiate at the St. Julian House in Verona from 7 September 1945 to 8 September 1946, the day of his religious profession. He ended his three years of study at secondary school and made his perpetual profession on 9 October 1949. He then engaged in theological studies and was ordained by Msgr. Gerolamo Bortignon, the Bishop of Padua, first as a deacon on 28 February 1953, and then as a priest on 21 June 1953, always being a member of the house in Mottinello.
On 25 March 2018, Palm Sunday, in the community of the Daughters of St. Camillus of Arguello Cordoba, Argentina, the death took place of Sr. CHERUBUNA RAFFAELLI, a citizen of Argentina. She was ninety years old and seventy-one years of her life had been spent as a woman religious.
‘Now they live in Christ whom they met in the Church, followed in our vocation, and served in the sick and the suffering. Trusting that the Lord, the Holy Virgin our Queen, St. Camillus, the Blessed Luigi Tezza, the Blessed Giuseppina Vannini, and our deceased religious brothers and sisters, will welcome them in their midst, we commend them in our prayers, remembering them with affection, esteem and gratitude’.
PRAYER FOR THE VICTIMSOF ANY DISASTER
For all the victims of disasters, for the persons who lost their lives, for their dear ones, for all survivors, and for all those responding to emergencies, we pray:
Heavenly Father, who created and protected every existence, You know all our sorrows and sufferings. May all those victims of disasters be received in your peace. Receive us in your mercy as we pray all our brothers and sisters who had been buried by the forces precipitated by nature.
Bring them to your home. Console the pains of the many families; wipe out the tears of our brothers and sisters;
protect the solitude of the many orphans.
Fill us with your courage so that the pain will become a path of growth and hope. Awaken the hearts of all Christians and of men and women of goodwill, who desire to commit themselves so that the wounds of those who suffer from these calamities will experience the comfort of fraternal solidarity,
You who lives and reigns forever and ever.
AMEN.
Our Father, the Hail Mary, Gloria
