LETTER FROM KANSAS CITY
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL

JESUS CARITAS FRATERNITY OF PRIESTS
27 OCTOBER 2016

Dear brothers,

We began our meeting of the International Council with a special remembrance of our deceased brothers, Tony PHILPOT, former International Responsible, and Giuseppe COLAVERO and Hermann STEINERT. All our brothers have been in our prayers, our thoughts and our hearts.

Our first theme was to do a review of our lives, that is, how we have lived and been since our last meeting in Aurelio’s house in Périn, Spain. These days in Kansas City have been very rich in contacts with and in time spent with the people of Mark’s three parishes and other religions–multi-ethnic and varied, diverse lay groups, religious, students of various schools, the simple people for whom Mark is a good shepherd. Thank you Mark for all the work of welcome and for facilitating things.

We also met brothers of the fraternities of the United States, gathered as the National Council in Kansas City on 25 October; we shared prayer, Eucharist and dinner with Jerry, Joe, Greg, Ron, John and Bob. We felt friendship and closeness. And we have been touched by the pain of our brother in fraternity, Mark’s housemate Tom, 82 years old who was attacked and robbed at the entrance to his house during our stay and who is recovering in the hospital.

The place where we worked, the Sanctuary of Hope, has helped us to be a fraternity and to work on the diverse topics that we brought as our agenda. The house has helped us live in a climate of work and prayer. Liturgy of the hours, adoration and Eucharist, and even a half-day in the desert, have made it possible for us to be close to God and to you.

The objective of our meeting has been to take our pulse as fraternity and to study the diverse realities on the continents and the questions that inter-religious and inter-cultural dialog pose to us, challenging us as persons, as a Church and as fraternity. We see a world threatened and attacked by fundamentalists, terrorism, political crises in many countries, the lack of a response by governments and the increase of populist movements—all this causes our societies to be more closed and fearful of those “outside.”

Reviewing the two continental assemblies held this year, the First Pan American Assembly in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and the Asian Assembly held in Cebu, Philippines, and looking to the next European Assembly in Poland in July 2017, we received and studied the calls given to the International Team. These included especially the development of the fraternities and of our personal lives as diocesan priests who follow the charism of Charles de FOUCAULD, deepening in the missionary character of going to the peripheries, which Br. Charles showed us in the last stage of his life and before his death. From all our reflections, studies and dialogues etc, we are able to say that the theme of the next General Assembly in Bangalore, India, 15-30 January 2019 will be:

MISSIONARY DIOCESAN PRIESTS TODAY INSPIRED BY THE WITNESS OF CHARLES DE FOUCAULD.

We have elaborated a questionnaire for all local fraternities of the world to review and answer; it will be sent to the regional responsibles and published in our web site www.iesuscaritas.org. We heard and considered the proposals of the Pan American Assembly which have shed much light on all this.

We believe that Charles de Foucauld has been compartmentalized in a monastic model, and it concerns us how we identify with his charisms as diocesan priests. For this we want to re-identify with his missionary spirit, both as contemplative and as a man of the street, toward Muslims (in his case) and with the people with whom he lived his Nazareth. This reflection points to a response to the call to be missionaries along the lines of the intuitions of Brother Charles, to be a Church in Mission, a Church like the Good Samaritan, that gets off its donkey to attend to those most in need, to a wounded world, to an abandoned humanity, a people without hope, and to be a Church in dialogue and encounter with other religions, cultures and societies.

We have seen the necessity of creating a Directory for the Month of Nazareth that will better serve the development and life of the fraternities. For this we asked the collaboration of three brothers who have accepted this job, reuniting and forming a small fraternity in February 2017 in Spain: Manual POZO (Spain), Fernando TAPIA (Chile, and Continental Responsible for America) and Jean Michel BORTHERIE (France.) Thanks to them for this service to the Fraternity. The document should be approved in the General Assembly in Bangalore. It is necessary to gather material of concrete experiences, some of which were expressed in the last assembly in Poissy.

We have heard the echo of different world events on the occasion of the Centenary of the Easter of Brother Charles in local fraternities, countries and in communion with the Spiritual Family of Charles de Foucauld—lay, religious, communities… What we hear fills us with joy and peace. As does the naming by Pope Francis of two members of the Fraternity of Priests as cardinals, in Myanmar and Malaysia; we are joyful and strengthened.

Mark presented us the financial report of the worldwide Fraternity. Thanks to the fraternities that help economically each year. We also invite the fraternities that do not collaborate that they would make an effort to strengthen the common good of the Fraternity no matter how small your financial contribution may be. Thank you. From this moment we need to reduce our expenses and save money for the General Assembly in India.

The next meeting of the International Council will be in Bangalore in January of 2018, one year before the General Assembly, to prepare, concretize and become familiar with the meeting site and to give flesh to an assembly that expresses all that the brothers of the world want to say, propose and support; our intention is to be very concrete in the activities, reflections and conclusions that are made.

We want to say to all that today, in the present moment in our world, with its great questions and challenges, with the situations that get out of hand and those we can handle, in this present moment of the Church, with Francis in front, as pastor and man of God, with varied pastoral and spiritual lines that are sometimes opposed, Charles de Foucauld, through his Family of Fraternities has much to say and contribute with his message of encounter between persons and different societies, and with his call to be the presence of Jesus without fear, without reserve, without evading responsibility, and with boundless confidence.

For all this, we trust in you and in your great and sincere hearts and we send you our sincere and brotherly affection.

Emmanuel, Jean François, Félix, Mark, Mauricio and Aurelio
Sanctuary of Hope, Kansas City, Kansas, United States, 27 October 2016

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