(ANS – Rome) – Thirty-nine young Salesians, most of them post-novices, from all over the world, are at present in the Generalate in Rome. They are here to take part in the now widely acclaimed Preparatory Course for New Missionaries, which precedes the traditional Missionary Expedition.

The course is intended as an immediate preparation for the new missionaries, to help them to enter a new culture and to form attitudes that will make their presence in their new countries pleasant, humble, discreet and, above all, effective.

Right now the trainee missionaries are doing the first part of the course, all of which will be done here in Rome. It opened on 4 September and will finish on the twenty-first of this month. During this time the missionaries will follow a course made up of workshops and sharing. There will be four modules of study. The first is an introductory one, while the other three focus on various aspects - anthropological-cultural, missiological and Salesian. During this first phase, each of them will have an individual meeting with Fr Václav Klement, Councillor General for the Missions.  They will also have the opportunity of visiting places of important Christian and Salesian Significance in Rome, and they will meet the Holy Father in the audience on Wednesday 18 September.

The second part of the course will be from 22 to 29 September. After a first stop in Genoa, they will make their way to the traditional Salesian places: Mornese, Chieri, Castelnuovo Don Bosco, Torino, Valdocco…  During this itinerant phase, Fr Klement will have a second meeting with each missionary.

At the end of the course each of them will be in a position to draw up his own Project of Salesian Missionary Life.

Published 10/09/2013