Young adults will be able to continue their Ignatian formation as they enter university life with the opening of Jesuit House in Sydney. In this letter to the Province, Australian Provincial Fr Steve Curtin SJ says the house, part of The Cardoner Project, now has a community of young men living there and has begun functioning as a venue for formation and prayer, as well as socialising.
Father General Adolfo Nicolás SJ has given his permission for the establishment of an education project in Cambodia. The school, as proposed in the report Discerning a Major Focus for our Education Project in Cambodia, comprises a medium sized secondary school with four classes in each grade and a small primary school with two classes in each grade. It will include a teacher training resource centre (which will also function as a community learning centre) and a hostel for trainee teachers.
There was much delight at the recent JCAP Education meeting in two significant developments.
Fr Christopher Gleeson SJ, JCAP Education Secretary and meeting chairman, shared that the group learnt a good deal from inaugural Principal, Fr Plinio, about the beginning in January of the new school in Timor-Leste, Colégio de Santo Inácio de Loiola.
Pope Francis drew on some Ignatian themes in his prepared text for his meeting with students from Jesuit schools on June 7. His message was as much to Jesuit educators as to the students.
The Pope spoke of interior freedom, of being men (and women) with and for others, of finding God in our daily life. He wrote: “learn to read the signs of God in your life. He always speaks to us, also through the events of our time and of our everyday existence. It is up to us to listen to him.”
As if beginning a school literally from ground up were not challenge enough, the team responsible for the Jesuit educational institute in Timor-Leste is having to race through its first year of school and begin its second academic year some two months earlier than anticipated.
The first Jesuit private university in India will open its doors next year. It will be named after St Francis Xavier, and will be built in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, where the Jesuits already run a business management institute, the Xavier Institute of Management. The Orissa state Legislative Assembly recently gave the go-ahead to the project, which was first proposed four years ago.
The Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific has published its 2013 annual report, Jesuits in Asia Pacific 2013.
The document offers Jesuits, collaborators and friends a report by Conference President Fr Mark Raper SJ on 2012, articles on four key areas for the Conference that year – education, formation, spirituality and international works, and a brief look forward to 2013.
Redfern Jarjum College, a Jesuit primary school for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, was officially opened on April 13, with a number of dignitaries giving the school and its students their blessing.
Since 2011, we have held during Water Week the annual Lane Cove River Catchment Day, a combined project of the schools of the Lane Cove river catchment team where whole group and small group activities are held based around local catchment issues. The Lane Cove river catchment is 95.4 square kilometres and contains 12,600 megalitres of water.
In February, the Jesuits in Timor-Leste welcomed their latest collaborators in their education mission – the Religious of Jesus and Mary (RJM).
