Spain – Salesian Youth Centres dream of their future at a provincial congress

06 November 2023

(ANS – León) – The Santiago el Mayor House in León welcomed a hundred people a the weekend of 4 and 5 November 2023, who arrived there to take part in the 2nd Congress of the Youth Centres from the St James the Greater Province, Spain. It was an extraordinary forum that brought together Rectors, Coordinators and Animators from 38 centres from every corner of the province, and which was divided into different reflection groups.

The meeting began with a moment of prayer led by the Provincial Coordinator of Missionary and Vocational Animation, Fr José Carlos Sobejano, and with a greeting from the National Coordinator of Youth Centres, Fr Pedro Hernández. The Provincial Delegate for Youth Ministry, Fr Xabier Camino, reviewed the process of reshaping this environment and how this congress fits into this path.

The main intervention was by the Provincial of SSM, Fr Fernando García Sánchez, who in his reflection on the "present and future of the Youth Centres in the houses of our province" stressed that "in this environment many young people have found their vocation to marriage, their vocation in the Salesian Family and their desire to remain in Salesian work with different levels of commitment up until today." The Provincial then stressed that "the Youth Centre is the pastoral setting in the Province that involves most of the younger Salesians" because "the life that flows in our Youth Centres is a treasure to be guarded, but the ways in which we can do so must be different in the coming years" because, he stressed, "the life of our Youth Centres is the soul of our charism."

"Because of its characteristics of relational style, educational interventions and the spiritual proposals that take place in the Youth Centre, the connection this setting has with the first steps taken by Don Bosco in the birth of the Oratory of St Francis de Sales is particularly significant" the Provinces stressed. I therefore invite the heads of the Youth Centres to continue "responding to the needs of young people", since "living in the world of young people was the path chosen by Don Bosco to become a point of reference for their lives." For Fr García Sánchez, "as we did in our origins, we are called to look to our identity and overcome the crises and difficulties that can arise in fidelity to our educational and evangelising mission." Finally, he recalled that "the Youth Centres of our Province are called to replicate the intuition of Don Bosco which led him to bring together people of different ages to create a family."

The afternoon of Saturday 4 November was dedicated to group study of a document prepared by the Youth Centres Commission on reshaping  this setting. A reflection that is the result of an extensive process carried out in recent years. This process, according to the working document, responds to the fact that "if we want to propose Youth Centres with a lower presence of Salesians, these functions must also be carried out, individually or collegially, so that the resulting group remains a Salesian Youth Centre."

In the text on which the different groups worked, the specific functions of educators, the difficulties, the social dimension of the setting and the associative and non-formal nature of the centres were reviewed. The afternoon ended with a moment of prayer and a Salesian Goodnight by Carlos Hermida, President of the Confederación Don Bosco which brings together 127 Youth Centres in Spain. He offered a rereading of the Letter of Don Bosco from Rome on 10 May 1884 and provided an overview of the reality of the Youth Centre today.

Sunday 5 November was dedicated to sharing the work of the eight groups from the previous day. The Eucharist, celebrated by the Provincial at the end of the morning, and the official photo of participants, concluded the provincial congress, which in any case has already been projected forward with a view to the national congress on the same Salesian setting to be held in the future.

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