Hello from the Philippines!
As noted previously on the website, Fr. Frank Wittouck is spending a few weeks with the SCJ formation community in the Philippines. He recently sent an update:
“There are about a dozen seminarians in my English class. I am helping the ESL teacher and have the more advanced students. They are a fine bunch of young men and very eager to learn. We mostly work on vocabulary and pronunciation. They work on the reading of the Mass and give mini-sermons in class. We also watch movies, such as“Saving Private Ryan” and then discuss the values found in them. One of the students took me on a jitney for a haircut. The area is beautiful but the weather is hot and there is no air conditioning. Thank God for my previous experience in the Rio Grande Valley! I know what heat is.
“My time here has proven to be a fine experience; I encourage other SCJs come here as well.”
The formation program in the Philippines is growing. This month, two novices in the Philippines professed their first vows and four renewed their temporary vows.
Provincial’s time
Fr. Cassidy is in Montréal this week, where he is taking part in two sets of meetings. The first is the “annual meeting of the religious conferences of the Americas,” he wrote on the province blog. “Each year one of the conferences acts as host, and this year’s honors fall to the Canadian Religious Conference (CRC). In addition to CMSM (Conference of Major Superiors of Men) and LCWR (Leadership Conference of Women Religious) we will be joined by CLAR (Conference of Latin American Religious). Both Canada and Latin America have one conference each that represents both men and women religious; though it would be more proper to say CLAR actually represents the individual religious conferences of the countries that make up Latin America.”
If you would like to read the rest of the blog entry, click here.
Fr. Cassidy returns to Milwaukee in time for Memorial Day. He then heads back to Canada on June 10 for the 100th anniversary celebration of the SCJ presence in North America. The Canadian Region is hosting the event in Ottawa on feast of the Sacred Heart, June 11.
Then it is back to Wisconsin, where Fr. Cassidy will host a Brewers’ tailgate party as a kick-off to the election assembly June 14-18.
100 years in North America
As noted above, the Canadian Region is hosting the 100th anniversary celebration of the SCJ presence in Canada.
“It is my profound desire that your missionaries come and help us in this new land, and particularly in the St. Albert Diocese,” wrote Bishop Emile Legal to Fr. Leo Dehon. The founder and the bishop of St. Albert had first become friends when they were students in Rome. “I know that you have priests from many countries, and we receive people from many countries. I consider it providential that you help us… I must say that the area is very poor. It will be a real missionary life for your priests and brothers. But the future is promising.”
On April 7, 1910, three French SCJs, along with a French diocesan priest, left for Alberta. The Priests of the Sacred Heart were given pastoral charge of Wainwright, a village on the edge of the Diocese of St. Albert near the Saskatchewan border.
These first SCJs who came to North America ministered primarily to French-speaking Catholics. However, as the face of western Canada changed, ministry to the French-speaking diminished. In 1940, the SCJ presence in western Canada ended and the congregation’s focus in Canada moved to Ontario and Quebec.
Ministry in the United States began in 1923 at St. Mary’s Church in Lower Brule, SD.
To read more about the congregation’s beginnings in North America, click here.
The Canadian Region will host an anniversary celebration at Resurrection parish in Ottawa on feast of the Sacred Heart, June 11.
Fridge Notes schedule
There will be no Fridge Notes published on Memorial Day. Instead, there will be a combined issue for May 31 and June 7 posted the week of June 7. During the next two weeks, Mary Gorski, the Fridge Notes editor, will be with the SCJ community in South Africa. Publication of the Fridge Notes and other news items will be dependent on internet availability.
Please continue to send news items to Mary Gorski as normal. However, if you have immediate news that needs to be shared with the community, please also contact Br. Frank Presto between May 26 and June 7.
EDITOR’S NOTE: For those interested, the SCJ formation community in Pietermaritzburg is hosting me (Mary Gorski) so that I can take part in the 85th running of the Comrades marathon. Don’t look for me to come in with the front-runners, I just hope to be one of the happy finishers under the 12-hour limit (although it has “marathon” in the title, Comrades is actually a 56-mile race). Photos and stories about the SCJs and their ministries in South Africa are planned for the province website and blog.
New center featured in Catholic Herald
Sacred Heart School of Theology’s Lux Center for Catholic-Jewish dialogue was featured in a story printed in Milwaukee’s Catholic Herald last week. To read it online click here.
Transitions
Son Ho is leaving the novitiate program. Initially he will go to Atlanta, his hometown, but hopes to soon return to Chicago to complete his last year of college at St. Xavier University. He is grateful for all the kindness extended to him over the years by the SCJs and asks for remembrance in prayer as his journey continues.
Please remember
Fr. Vito Orazio Lisi, a member of the South Italian Province, died May 18. He was born in 1933, professed in 1951 and ordained in 1960.
Former ESL student ordained
Fr. Fredy Patiño Montoya, an alumnus of Sacred Heart School of Theology’s ESL program, was ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of New York on May 15.
In talking about his vocation with a reporter for Catholic New York, Fr. Fredy noted that the first bishop he met in the United States was Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who was then archbishop of Milwaukee (he is now archbishop of New York). “Every one of us is part of a bigger plan,” said Fr. Fredy, adding that it was this first bishop he met who eventually ordained him. “These are not coincidences.”
You can read a profile of Fr. Fredy in a PDF version of the Catholic New York by clicking here.
