Rwanda – Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, 10th Successor of Don Bosco, in Africa for the Team Visit

21 February 2024
Rwanda – Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, 10th Successor of Don Bosco, in Africa for the Team Visit

(ANS – Kigali) – The 15 Superiors of the Salesian Provinces and Vice-Provinces of the Salesian Africa-Madagascar Region, with their respective Councillors, have been gathered in Kigali from Friday 16 February 2024  for the traditional meeting known as the "Team Visit" – an animation tool used by the Rector Major and the General Council to verify the ongoing journey in the different Salesian circumscriptions and ensure their convergence and unity. The meeting began with a day of pilgrimage, Monday, 19 February in Kibeho, in southern Rwanda, a significant place where several Marian apparitions took place between 1981 and 1989. It was a good opportunity for all those present to entrust the Salesian African Provinces and Vice-Provinces, with all their young people, to the Virgin Mary.

On Tuesday 20th, the 10th Successor of Don Bosco at the head of the Congregation was welcomed at the Salesian house in Gatenga by a group of students from the Salesian school and by the members of the 15 Provincial Councils of Africa who are in Kigali for the Team Visit.

The Rector Major was welcomed to the rhythm of the tam-tam and Burundian and Rwandan music, accompanied by joyful, dynamic and energetic traditional dances, with numerous acrobatics and applause from the spectators. “It was a way to express to our guests our joy at seeing them in this city of a thousand hills, asking them to accept us as we are, with our customs and our cultures” commented a Salesian of the Host Vice-Province of Africa Great Lakes (AGL) who was at the ceremony. He also added, “Rwanda is a disciplined and clean country, which shows signs of development and growth. It is also a land rich in the youth of its population, with its joys and its hopes, its struggles and its resistance, its perseverance and its faith.”

On the occasion, the young people gathered there greeted the Rector Major with a welcome speech, and expressed their gratitude for the education and training received in Salesian schools and educational centres.

At the operational level, the Team Visit had already begun in the morning, with two sessions of discussion between the members of the General Council and the Provincial Councils on the matter of Juridical Elements of Provincial Administration and on synergies of higher educational institutions in Salesian Africa with the Pontifical Salesian University (UPS) in Rome; however, it was at 5:00 pm local time (UTC+2) that the assembly met around the Rector Major for the official opening of the visit.

The ceremony began with a song of invocation to the Holy Spirit, who enlivens, purifies and sanctifies all things. Then Fr Pierre Célestin Ngoboka, Superior of the AGL Vice-Province, officially welcomed the Rector Major and his General Councillors and the various Superiors and their respective Provincial Councillors. He also greeted the heads of Don Bosco TECH Africa, the network that coordinates Salesian vocational formation in the Africa-Madagascar Region, and SAFCAM, the Salesian Formation Centre for Africa-Madagascar.

The Rector Major then greeted the assembly. He expressed his joy at being in Kigali together with his Council, among the confreres of this Region, and his satisfaction in seeing the charismatic and vocational growth of the Region. Therefore, he concluded by thanking the Lord for having given Don Bosco to the world and for the charismatic fruitfulness he generated.

The day continued with a presentation of the current situation of the Salesian presence in the Region, by the Councillor for the Africa-Madagascar Region, Fr Alphonse Owoudou, who is coordinating the visit. Finally, Fr Alfred Maravilla, General Councillor for the Missions, addressed the assembly with the aim of strengthening the missionary spirit in the region.

The day ended with the community recitation of Vespers and the Salesian Goodnight offered by the Rector Major.

Participants now have another three days full of work, prayer, discernment and discussion to discuss various emerging issues in the Region with the Rector Major and his Council. These discussions will help to revive the Salesian spirit in the Region and prepare for the 29th General Chapter of the Congregation.

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