Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Ravenna (Fides Service) - At 5pm on Sunday 18 April in the St Peter in Chains House in Ravenna, 31 delegates of Italian Xaverian missionaries gathered in church to pray and to invoke the Holy Spirit for the 12th Chapter of the Xaverian Community In Italy. Father Marcello Storgato reports to Fides that in the centre of the small assembly there was a tree of light, a vine emerging from the trunk of an olive tree, the work of a Xaverian artist Father Antonio Fogliani. On the vine branches five lamps to symbolise the five Xaverian characteristics: mission ad gentes, Christ centred spirituality, religious consecration for mission, spirit of family and the human qualities of the missionary. The lamps were lit by the oldest Chapter member Father Augusto Luca who knew the late founder Blessed Guido Conforti.
A large panel dominates the wall of the hall where the Chapter is meeting: it shows a vivacious rainbow and the silhouette of a traveller who has come to the ends of the earth and is faced with the alternatives: to stop, to turn back or… take a leap into the luminous light. The theme of the Chapter is written in the rainbow: "United in renewal. new wines in new skins". At the centre of the hall where the delegates sit in a square, at the feet of a splendid rododendron in bud, two empty skins waiting to be filled with new wine, among the green branches ready for harvesting. Father Agostino Rigon, outgoing superior offered the delegates a warm welcome and then Father Giancarlo Lazzarini, President of the assembly representing the Superior general, declared "open in the name of the Lord the 12th regional chapter of the Xaverians in Italy", the Chapter will close on 30 April. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 19/4/2004; Righe 21; Parole 298)
