EDITORIAL

PROPHETS AT THE PERIPHERIES

BY Rafael Armada | EDITOR

ON 2 February 2024 we celebrate the World Day for Consecrated Life coinciding with the feast of the Presentation of the Lord. The Consecrated Life is a particular way of being in the Church for those who promise or vow the Evangelical Counsels (poverty, chastity and obedience). Having discovered their Treasure, they opt to free themselves from family obligations, usually associated with the married state, and dedicate their lives to the radical living and spreading of the Good News.

As a manner of Christian life, Consecrated Life itself, including priests, transitional deacons, brothers and sisters, live their consecration in various forms, such as in Religious Institutes, Secular Institutes, Hermits, Consecrated Virgins and Widows, Societies of Apostolic Life, and new forms of Consecrated Life which the Spirit brings into existence. Religious Life is the most numerous among them and it is characterized by life in community. According to the latest available figures, there are 608 958 Religious women, 132 200 Religious priests and 49 774 Religious Brothers globally. Their numbers have been decreasing in Europe, America and Oceania, but not in Africa, where Congregations expanded considerably in membership numbers. Religious Life connects, in many ways, with the African soul.

Secularism and self-referentiality are two poisons that hampers the growth of
vocations in some parts of the world, as Archbishop Emeritus William Slattery OFM points out in this edition. However, Religious and Consecrated Life are still relevant and precious vocations in the life of the Church. Religious are needed in so many areas, like education, health, pastoral services, etc., as bearers of hope among especially the most marginalized people. Their call is to go beyond the boundaries of an institutionalized ecclesial structure and to risk further horizons, reaching the geographic and existential peripheries of the world.

Their imprint in a conflict-ridden and torn-apart world, comes across in their
call to fraternity, as we see in the lives of Fr Daniele Moschetti MCCJ and Sr Nelly Leon Correa RGS, who learn at the school of the poor and among the female inmates in the Chilean prisons, respectively. Consecrated people are prophets at the peripheries where they pursue bringing God’s closeness and His
merciful presence to the lives of those at the margins of the world.

As communities become more international and intercultural in
their composition, the Consecrated Life is changing. This is a challenge, but also an opportunity of growth for the consecrated, when interculturality
is welcomed as a prophetic gift of the possibilities of human living. The Spirit continues to inspire new forms of consecration and commitment at the service of the poor, as we realise through the narrations from the community of Sant’Egidio in Pretoria and the lay missionaries in Chikowa, Zambia.

Pope Francis has declared 2025 as a Jubilee Year. For consecrated men and women, the path to the 2025 Jubilee of the Consecrated
men and women has the slogan “Pilgrims of hope, on the way of peace.”
The Jubilee is a call to reconciliation, conversion and sacramental penance, as well as to solidarity, justice and joy in God’s service. Lent which will soon commence, is also an opportunity to be reconciled with God and with one another, as is the aim ofthe Jubilee of the Consecrated Life.

Lent which will soon commence, is also an opportunity to be reconciled with God and with one another, as is the aim of the Jubilee of the Consecrated Life.