News
We moved the furniture at Due Pini!
PGC - Highlight of the day n.1 - Monday, December 1, 2025
Roma
On this first day of December, the members of the General House in Rome had to move the furniture to accommodate the 23 participants in the Economic Council of the Congregation (CEC) and the Plenary General Council (PGC), which was extended to include the three territorial vicars. It is a joy to welcome everyone and to be able to enjoy reunions, discoveries, and fruitful exchanges during these days.
As you may know, for this academic year, the community of Due Pini is composed of 13 members: 7 members of the General Curia, the postulator and secretary general for formation, 1 brother serving the house, and 4 brothers studying. A week ago, the 7 (vice)provincial treasurers joined us, followed by the 9 brothers in charge of the Provinces and Vicariates. Finally, Brother Dider Remiot is also present for a morning of work with us. So there are 30 brothers staying at the house these days. And we must not forget the “virtual” presence of the Vice-Provincial of East Africa, via videoconference.
At the beginning of the meeting, following the Eucharistic celebration and the welcome address by the Superior General, we devoted two days to temporal matters through joint work by the CEC and the PGC.
This Monday morning, with Brother Didier, was mainly devoted to evaluating the work of the BDS (Bureau of Development and Solidarity) and to reviewing the progress of the ongoing reflection on the common management of our investments (a task requested by the last General Chapter). The work of the BDS requires a great deal of time and skill, and there is no shortage of challenges. One of the major challenges is to better train and empower the brothers who are responsible for projects at the local level so that they can respond more professionally to the high demands of fund providers. In other areas, the work of compiling data on financial investments managed in the provinces has been tedious, and the results remain incomplete. Nevertheless, the current situation shows the urgent need to move away from the current, highly unprofessional situation, with numerous “small” investments that are often poorly managed. Finally, we discussed a few ideas for preparing new brothers to take on responsibilities in these domains (BDS, monitoring of financial investments) without delay.
The rest of the day was devoted to various economic topics presented by Fr. Alex Castro: the budget of the General House, which now seems to be reaching a satisfactory financial balance; and an update on the annual Assumptionist solidarity campaign. We are seeing a decline in enthusiasm among many communities for these campaigns, whose results are falling every year. However, despite the significant amounts involved in these solidarity campaigns (from €18,000 to €35,000), if most of our communities, parishes, schools, lay groups, etc. were to get involved, we could easily reach the targets set. Let us not forget a few figures about the congregation: more than 120 communities, 90 schools, 80 parishes... We therefore discussed a few ideas for reviving mobilization around these campaigns, which aim to generate concrete, local solidarity in support of projects carried out by the Assumptionists.
After a good night's rest, we will continue with temporal issues on Tuesday...
Fr. Benoît Bigard