ASIA/CHINA - Three year refresher course for women religious in Han Dan diocese

Tuesday, 21 March 2006

Han Dan (Fides Service) - Women religious in the diocese of Han Dan will be offered a three year updating course to foster spiritual and intellectual growth in view of ever better service in the work of evangelisation and pastoral assistance. The course is being organised by the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and the Mother of God in Han Dan diocese province of Hebei. At the course inauguration ceremony on 10 March mother superior Sr. Zhang Xiang explained that the three year course will include subjects such as liturgy, Sacred Scripture, moral theology, psychology, spirituality, sacred music and literature. The conferences will be given by local priests who studied abroad in recent years.
The sisters of the Holy Spirit and the Mother of God were founded in 1923 by the diocese’s first Bishop Joseph Cui 1946-1951. It was dissolved in 1952 and re-created in 1988. In almost twenty years the community has grown. Today there are 88 professed sisters, 11 novices and 23 postulants. The sisters work in hospitals, kindergartens, schools and they also make and embroider vestments and altar linen. Han Dan has a population of 8.3 million of whom 130,000 are Catholics assisted by 41 priests and almost 200 women religious. It has about 40 seminarians and a hundred churches. (Agenzia Fides 21/03/2006 righe: 25 parole: 271)


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