News

6/10/2025

6/10/2025

PGC - Highlight of the day n.7 - Monday, June 9, 2025

A few unavoidable topics...

At each PGC, we have a few unavoidable topics, that is, discussions relating to the responsibilities of the PGC as defined in our Rule of Life (where we refer to the Council of the Congregation) and in our Chapter Rules (CR 194-197). These include the opening/closing of communities; the approval of provincial formators or CIFA or major houses of formation; formation programs; first apostolic appointments, etc.

So, on Monday, we reviewed six proposals for formators submitted by the provincials. We then took the time to discuss our criteria for accepting candidates for Assumptionist life. Beyond the individual criteria concerning the quality of the candidates, what are our criteria in terms of: the origin of the candidates? our capacity to welcome these candidates (structures, formators, finances)? the balance to be maintained for a certain diversity? the countries where we are, the countries where we could go? the profiles of candidates we need for specific missions? etc. The discussions focused mainly on the responsibility of each Province to exercise good discernment, to set criteria, not to be “subjected” but to make choices based on the issues mentioned above.

Thirdly, we returned to the question of interprovincial collaborations to be encouraged, cf. 34th GC No. 84: “The Chapter encourages the development of different types of interprovincial links, such as training centers working better as a network (on a linguistic basis, for example), interprovincial works, or new foundations supported by several Provinces.” A first step in implementing this could be sessions or formation programs organized in interprovincial collaboration, for which various concrete possibilities were discussed.

To conclude the day, time was set aside for further discussion in pairs...