Finally with this interview with the new General Team, we close a series of conversations we have had with the Provincial Teams of the Vedruna Family. In each of these interviews, the different provinces offered their local perspective on the same questions, giving us a broad and deep vision of the challenges, hopes and paths to follow in the coming years. Now, the General Team takes the floor to offer a congregational view that synthesizes, projects and concludes this valuable process.
The General Team defines six strategic axes for the six-year period 2023-2029, which include communion in mission, sustainability and synodality, guiding the path of renewal of the Vedruna Family. With the conviction that it is urgent to transform structures and ways of working, they call to facilitate dialogue and active participation of all its members.
With this interview, we conclude a stage of shared discernment, but a new chapter full of challenges and opportunities opens for the Vedruna Family. May the reflections presented here encourage us to continue walking together with joy and hope!
Faced with the most challenging realities that exist in the provinces, what strategies have you considered as a new EG to face them and sow life as a Vedruna Family?
During this time that we have been the General Government Team (the General Team with the Secretary and Administrator), we have dialogued and worked as deeply as possible to concretize the calls and requests made to us by the 28th General Chapter.
In relation to what was said in the first question of this interview, in order to respond to the multiple and complex challenges of our own reality and that of the realities in which we are present, the strategic axes that we have defined to systematize our task during the six-year period 2023-2029 are six:
- Charismatic family in communion and mission
- Communication
- Sustainability and prophecy
- Training
- Synodality, structures, leadership, participation
- Accompanying the Vedruna Family
2. In the light of the proposals that emerged from the Chapter, what specific aspects do you consider that the Vedruna Family and/or the General Team could leave behind to make room for new initiatives and renewal?
We consider it necessary to let go of a way of thinking and imagining ourselves in isolation, at all levels: personal, community, provincial, regional, political, cultural, religious… with all that this entails in terms of reductionism, immobilism and despair that something could be different from what we already know and experience.
Only by looking beyond our own reality, so often short-sighted or too tied to present difficulties, will we be able to make the right decisions and take the new steps required by this historic time, in which life is at stake and the future of our Family, too. Our gaze is directed towards suffering humanity and the Earth that groans and becomes joint action with so many other persons and groups that move for another possible world.
We have received the gift of faith in Jesus, who is Way, Truth and Life. We have also received the gift of the Vedruna Charism that urges us to embrace all the needs of the people and that from the love that never says enough, inspires us to continue finding new ways and forms to announce the Good News in this world that God loves and embraces. With all our energy put in the following of Jesus from the notes of our Charism, the new will emerge.
What are the main goals and objectives that the team intends to achieve during this new period, in response to the needs and challenges identified in the Chapter and the current reality?
They are related to the aforementioned axes and reflect the appeals and concretions of the last General Chapter.
We would like to advance significantly in the change of structures and adaptation of our Family to our present reality, with an eye on the calls and needs of today’s world.
Learning to live in a synodal dynamic in all our relationships, tasks and achievements is a primary objective related to the change of mental and organizational structures. We hope that decisions on the part of all of us, in our own sphere, will not be made without processes of dialogue, encounter and transparent information.
In the Strategic Plan we have expressed our objectives and goals with the vision we wish to come as close as possible to during these years: “To be a RENEWED Family that has taken significant steps in Synodality, contributing life in RENEWED charismatic mission”.
4. In the current context of the deterioration of the Common Home, how would you like the Vedruna Family to address environmental challenges and what specific actions could you take to contribute to sustainability?
The Vedruna Family is already involved in addressing environmental challenges, which include the abysses of inequality and violence, but all seems little in the face of the serious crisis that deepens day by day and that places us in an unprecedented emergency because of its possible irreversibility, which entails intensifying our commitment.
We would like to address these challenges in a more coordinated way as a Family, but also united with so many people, groups and entities that are strongly committed and well organized.
Each Province/Delegation has its own plan; it is up to us to be attentive to what is being undertaken and to support it with determination. How?
- Promoting, with even more impetus, the experience of Justice, Peace, Integrity of Creation (JPIC), redefined especially from the Encyclical Laudato Si. We remain committed to the Laudato Si Platform and the Global Education Pact; we continue to deepen the choices we have already made: ethics of sufficiency, personal and institutional commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, Vedruna Voice, Non-violence. UNANIMA membership, etc.
- In our daily work and visits we try to pay attention to sustainability and care, trying to reduce our own environmental impact. Virtual meetings and encounters are an example of the existence of possibilities and alternatives that help us to achieve this goal.
- By encouraging sufficient training in this subject, taking advantage of the many quality resources promoted by the Church, the UISG-USG and so many other entities that make their wisdom available to all.
How do you plan to facilitate open and constructive dialogue among the different communities and members of the Vedruna Family, in order to promote a synodal culture?
Born Again (n. 13) reminds us that “synodality is walking, praying, dreaming and participating together…”
Facilitating this experience implies committing ourselves to these verbs in our daily relationships. Also, keeping alive the awareness that the mission is built together.
It means favoring and giving space to all voices in our dynamics of work, governance, relationships, in the ways in which we are organizing the general structures of participation.
We want to listen in depth, beyond the urgencies, so as not to miss the specific, the small, the marginal, where the novelty emerges and giving enough time to discernment.
From our own Vedruna, we consider indispensable and urgent to promote the common, the links with others. We also see it necessary to move from autonomy to interdependence, at all levels: personal, community, local, provincial, general, global; because everything is interrelated, everything affects us and everything involves us.
For example, we have tried to organize ourselves so that this becomes a reality in our visits, in the accompaniment of the work of the Commissions, Teams, in the periodic meetings with the Provincial Teams/Delegation, in the promotion of serious processes of listening, discernment and decision making based on sincere and open dialogue.
From the very beginning, we have always wanted to carry out the service entrusted to us, doing it with joy and dedication.
Thank you very much!
We also invite you to read the interviews with the provincial teams, which are now available:
