Dear Fathers and Brothers,
Greetings from sunny Rome and from General Congregation 35! John Lee and I have now been in Rome 40 days! No decree yet, only a new General and a renewed team of Regional Assistants, as you know. Today Fr. General appointed two more General Counselors, Mark Rotsaert from Belgium and Arturo Sosa from Venezuela. I have learned that the most important responsibility of Regional Assistants in not to represent the Assistancy but to be a counselor of Fr. General for his government of the whole Society. These two new counselors are not regional assistants and they will continue to live in their own country but they will fly to Rome whenever they are needed.
In the first days of the Chinese New Year, Fr. Bernard Chu and Fr. John Ts’ai have left us. Although I knew that both were at the end of their pilgrimage and I had visited them before leaving for Rome, I felt sorry not to be able to be at their side at the end of their life and unable to send them to their final resting place in Changhua. This is normally an important part of my mission as provincial. When my own parents died, I was not at their bedside, but each time I was able to go back home, greet friends and family, preside at the funeral and accompany them to the cemetery. This time, the duty to be at the congregation did not make it possible to be present to my two Jesuit brothers.
Our new General seems to adapt very well to his new responsibilities, and he is still the same jovial, active, easy-to-approach person. According to Chinese custom, he has to receive a Chinese name (He was not given a new name in Japan.) We thought of a family name that would have some resemblance with his original Spanish family name, and we decided on 倪, for Nicolás. Then we tried to find two other characters that would express the original meaning of “Nicolas”, a name which comes from two Greek words and means “victory of the people.” We also had to find Chinese characters that would sound well both in Mandarin and Cantonese. Finally we settled for 胜民. Consequently our new General Superior is 倪胜民 总会长.
You must have read in several different reports how our discernment leading to the election of Fr. General was a great experience of communal discernment. The experience of deep unity in our great diversity led all of us to much consolation. Now that we are working on documents like identity, mission, governance, collaboration with others, etc., and that we have to write documents, we experience our diversity in a very different way. We have so many diverse points of view, and the views are not easily reconciled. This becomes very obvious when we are faced with the draft of a decree, which we examine in Assistancy groups, followed by summary reports in the Aula and individual expression of opinions in the same Aula. We pray very well together, and in several different languages, but when it comes to expressing what we think on important matters of our Jesuit life we realize that we often have quite diverse ways of looking at it. And we are a group of Jesuits very committed to our vocation and trying our best to express what we are and what our mission is. I now realize better that “unity in diversity” is something that results only from great efforts and much listening, and it finally comes only as a gift from the Spirit. It was not different in the time of Ignatius and the First Companions.
Please continue to accompany us, especially with your prayers!
Louis Gendron, SJ.