Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - "We have remained faithful to the original mission conceived by the founders. The work was born from the awareness that a newly formed Church needs to be helped in forming their own ministers", says Msgr. Jan Dumon, General Secretary of the Pontifical Society of St. Peter the Apostle, in an interview with Fides and answered some questions on the occasion of World Mission Day.
What is the mission of the Pontifical Society of St. Peter the Apostle?
Our Society was born from the realization that a newly formed Church needs to be helped in forming their own ministers. When Jeanne Bigard and her mother Stephanie, our founders, thought about the problem, this was not obvious to everyone in the Church at that time. The Society was born in the context of a debate between two views within the Church (the official date of the Foundation of St. Peter the Apostle is 1889 in Caen, France). A part of the missionary world, argued that it was important to focus on preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments. The question of ecclesial vocations and the formation of a native clergy came later. But there was another vision that stated that if on one hand it is right to strive to offer catechesis for all the inhabitants of a land of mission, on the other hand it is right to immediately form a local clergy. It is this position that with great audacity, the Holy See adopted and promoted. In my opinion this is a great example of courage on behalf of the Holy See.
However at the basis of our work there was the audacity of the two founders, who in order to help their friend the Bishop of Nagasaki to build a seminary, they provided their family’s money and then they started thinking about how to help, in a concrete way the formation of the new Churches’ priests. Only later, with the development of the society, the Bigards became aware of how much it had grown, but at that point the family and the resources made available by their friends and acquaintances were no longer sufficient, and thus collecting money was born.
How does the Society that you guide operate?
As I said, our task is to help local Churches which have recently been formed or have serious economic difficulties in caring for the formation of their priests, the diocesan clergy in the first place, although in some cases we intervene in favor of the religious clergy. This means helping local Churches to face the not inconsiderable expenses for infrastructure construction and maintenance of seminaries. In this regard, let me emphasize that you cannot do any kind of formation on a tree, at the most you can say a Mass on a tree, this happened to me in my life as a missionary in Africa, but you cannot keep 100 students in the forest : this is why facilities are needed. As much as we try to reduce expenses, the costs of the seminars are however substantial. For example, recently the Bishops of Burundi decided to build a new national Seminar to accommodate a hundred students a year. Although the project was drawn up in a very economical manner, the cost of the structure is about 2-3 million dollars. It is evident that the Church of a Country where most people live on less than $ 2 a day cannot face such challenging spending.
But it is not just to build new seminars, there is also special maintenance of existing facilities. In Africa and elsewhere, there are 100-150 year old Seminars that now must be restored. In some cases there is no running water and electricity. Nowadays you cannot force a hundred students to live with no running water.
But we do not only deal with buildings. In particular, our action is developed in three other areas: along with the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples we help with the formation of trainers who work in seminaries through special courses held locally or in Rome, in pontifical universities. So we support the development of libraries in seminars in order to provide them the most important and updated texts. Finally, we offer assistance in the field of computer science, to help seminars to equip themselves with computers and Internet connections. The web, among other things, is of great help when some texts are available directly on the network. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 20/10/2011)
