(ANS – Mandalay)– Although the Salesian Mission in Myanmar started in 1939, all of seventy-six years ago, the more than eighty Salesian confreres and seven novices are going through a period of charismatic re-foundation.

During the past fifty years the whole Catholic Church in Myanmar experienced isolation from the world wide Catholic community. So now the Salesian Vice-province is slowly recovering the gift of full communion with the Salesian World Community. During his visit of the past six days, the Councillor for the East Asia-Oceania Region saw many visible signs of a charismatic new spring:

• Apart from the four formation houses (Aspirantate, Pre-novitiate, Post-novitiate and Theologate) there are as yet no other canonically erected communities. Under the leadership of the third superior of the Vice- province Fr Charles Saw (2015-2021), the other seven houses with one or two confreres are being slowly consolidated in numbers and in quality.
• Salesians are located amidst the poorest young people in many parts of the large country and slowly developing small scale vocation training centres for the youth at risk. The Don Bosco Vocation training centre in Myitkyina in Kachin State caters for more than eighty out-of-school youth and is becoming known as the Valdocco of Myanmar. Many training programmes for young people are now being developed in Yangon, Mandalay, Myitkyina, Anisakan and Kalay Myo. The dynamic presence of six young Salesian Brothers guarantees a professional backbone to this typically Salesian mission of vocation training.
• The average age of the Salesians is 34 and that brings also a challenge of mature growth. Among the first steps after the Bicentenary is the desire to guarantee a personal spiritual guide for each confrere (Provincial circular n.4). We are the most numerous male religious Congregation in Myanmar. This is an honour but also a responsibility to witness to the shining beauty of consecrated life.
• In order to bridge the long years without communion with the worldwide Congregation, the Salesians of Myanmar are trying to connect with all the other provinces of the East Asia-Oceania Region. Two students of theology will soon leave for their studies in Melbourne, Australia. The Salesian Mission Office at Seoul in the Korean Province is preparing a first youth and medical mission in Yangon and the province is trying to learn from similar education works in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. The first two young Myanmar Missionaries ad gentes are now being formed in Nairobi and Jerusalem and the first meeting of the East Asia-Oceania Region to take place in Myanmar (a meeting of Economers) is scheduled for March 2016.
• After the successful Don Bosco Bicentenary celebrations there are some small but beautiful signs of a charismatic spring – like a vibrant start of the Don Bosco Past Pupils’ Association in Myitkyina, the new Don Bosco Bakery in Mandalay, the first steps towards setting up a Planning and Development Office, systematic translation of Salesian materials into the Burmese language and the participatory process for the first OPP and SEPP of the Vice-province.

Published 27/10/2015