ASIA/INDONESIA – Visiting Catholic families: witnesses to the beauty of consecrated life

ASIA/INDONESIA – Visiting Catholic families: witnesses to the beauty of consecrated life

Monday May 6, 2024

Semarang (Agenzia Fides) – They want to proclaim the Gospel and testify to the beauty of a life completely dedicated to the Lord: in this spirit, in some areas of Indonesia, members of the local clergy and religious men and women live a period of ‘ live’, i.e. they stay for a few days as guests at home in Catholic families and share a time in which they show, especially to young people, the joy of their vocational choice of devotion.
Priests, religious and seminarians are experiencing a more intense and in-depth dialogue with the laity, meeting and befriending local Catholics, says Francis Xavier Juli Pramana, a catechist and teacher at a vocational school in Solo, Central Java province. The initiative aims to reverse the decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious life, which traditionally flourished in Indonesia but has declined there in recent years. Sister Rustika of the Sisters of St. Francis says: “Our presence among local Catholics serves to introduce young people to consecrated life and to show them how consecrated people live their daily lives. The religious vocation is a special grace that God gives, and this grace must be shared with children and young people and brought to them.” In Solo, as part of the initiative, families with children, adolescents and young people also visited the homes of local religious, recognizing their educational work in schools and orphanages. In anticipation of Pope Francis’ visit in September next year, the Church in Indonesia is also paying attention to developments in the field of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. At St. Peter Canisius Mertoyudan Minor Seminary in Magelang, Central Java, there are currently a total of 194 seminarians, reports Dean Fr. Mark Yumartana (SJ). At St. Paul’s Major Seminary in Kentungan (Yogyakarta), the total number of candidates for the priesthood is 68, explains Dean Father Dwi Aryanto. Both seminaries belong to the Archdiocese of Semarang in Central Java and have always been a point of reference in the country when it comes to understanding and evaluating trends in priestly and religious vocations. Hundreds of Indonesian priests and dozens of Indonesian bishops are former students of these seminaries. Many will recall that even Pope Francis has recognized on several occasions that the Indonesian archipelago is a global source of religious vocations. Over the past decade, Indonesian orders and congregations have recorded a decline in the number of vocations: compared to the 1980s, there are far fewer postulants and novices in the novitiates of women’s and men’s religious houses. The decline is worrying: “We have four novices, two postulants and two aspirants,” notes Sister Theresianne, superior of the Daughters of Jesus and Mary, who has worked as a missionary in the Netherlands for almost twelve years, while the Ursuline Sisters have the most novices (currently 17), postulants and aspirants no longer come from Java, but from other islands, reports Sister Lita Hasanah, superior of the Indonesian Ursuline Order. An exception is the province of West Kalimantan on the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo: at least twelve young women joined the congregation in 2021, says Sister Kresentia Yati of the Congregation of the Franciscan Missionaries of Saint Anthony, while ten girls joined the congregation. novices under the Korean Franciscan Sisterhood (KFS) in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, and 24 have joined the Order of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God (Sfic) in the same province.
The initiative of sharing and exchange between consecrated women and families is appreciated in several dioceses and could be expanded and re-imagined in other places so that Indonesia, on a path of mutual rapprochement, can affirm itself as a “land of religious vocations” . (PA/MH) (Agenzia Fides, 5-6-2024)

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