Between October 2024 and January 2025, Sisters Maria Irizar and Maggie D’Costa will visit the Province of India on behalf of the General Team.
Below we share the first chronicle of their trip, between October 30 and November 9.
Arrival
Since we arrived in Mumbai on October 30, we spent several days in the city acclimatizing and participating in some events at the Provincial House in Shradhaseri. In Mumbai we visited the Oshiwara community, which is a home for girls in family distress, where three Sisters currently live with 31 girls and adolescents.
Northeast
Subsequently, on day 4 we traveled to the northeast. In this remote region of the country there are 7 Vedruna communities. We visited 5 of them and met in a regional assembly with 19 of the 28 sisters who were able to attend. Unfortunately, we could not visit the communities of Mintong and Bordumsa, due to the impossibility of accessing the state of Arunachal Pradesh without official permission; but we did manage to meet with them in Maibang.
In these northeastern states, the Sisters are involved in educational projects in schools, health centers, and in the social field; they also work in a girls’ home and boarding schools for students at both the school and university levels.
These days have allowed us to fulfill several objectives of the trip:
- The visit to the communities indicated, including the community meeting in which we deepened our understanding of the life and mission of each community.
- The holding of one of the seven regional assemblies planned.
- The deepening of the objectives of the visit, which are mainly synodality and shared leadership.
- Accompanying the Sisters in their life and mission.
- Knowledge of each reality in which the Sisters are inserted, the people with whom they share their daily lives and the places where they carry out their work.
On November 1 we participated in the opening of the meeting of the Vedruna laity of India, held on November 1-2 in Mumbai. Then, in Maram (Manipur) we visited the Salesian Fathers who run the Don Bosco center in the locality, where the Vedruna have a collaboration agreement. In Diphu (Assam) we visited Bishop Paul, who invited us to dinner. In Maibang we met Fr. Thomas, a Jesuit in charge of the works of the Society of Jesus in the region and who resides in the compound of St. Xavier’s School.
For us, this trip has been a rich experience because of the cultural exchange we are living. Some of the things that have caught our attention have been:
- The inter-ethnic conflict present in the Manipur region, which conditions the socioeconomic life of the area.
- In the northeastern states of India that we have visited, the Vedruna presence is small in number but it is an emerging mission and has great strength because of the commitment, enthusiasm and dedication of the sisters, very committed to these peoples and communities little considered by the state and governments, compared to other parts of the country.
- In some of the presences, there are many diverse communities in terms of origin, religious tradition and social situation: Adivasis, tea plantation workers, Muslim minorities, migrants from many tribes… For example, in the Vedruna School of Borlengri, there are students from 19 different communities in kindergarten and primary school.
- The Vedruna presence is developed in collaboration with the dioceses and other religious congregations.
- Some places are majority Catholic, but in others there is no presence at all and the difficulties for evangelization take the form of administrative, political and economic obstacles; despite this challenge, the sisters remain open to everyone regardless of their religious or ethnic background, thus showing that the Good News of Jesus is for everyone.
