Saturday, May 18, 2019

The 202^nd Ordinary General Chapter of the Conventual Friars Minor began at 4:30 p.m. in the “papal hall” of the Sacred Convent in Assisi.

The Min­is­ter Gen­er­al, Fri­ar Mar­co TASCA, invit­ed the par­tic­i­pants to pray the Our Father. Then Fri­ar Víc­tor MORA made a pre­sen­ta­tion on how to oper­ate the tablets that will be used to lis­ten to the inter­preters, to vote and to get doc­u­ments rel­e­vant to the dis­cus­sions. In order to com­mu­ni­cate in the dif­fer­ent lan­guages of the Order (Ital­ian, Span­ish, Eng­lish and Pol­ish) Fri­ar Vic­tor was assist­ed by Fri­ar Tim­o­thy KULBICKI and Fri­ar Tomasz SZYMCZAK. After the nec­es­sary expla­na­tions and clar­i­fi­ca­tions were giv­en, the inter­preters’ booths began to func­tion prop­er­ly, to the applause and relief of all the participants.
Fri­ar Vic­tor went on to present a doc­u­ment offer­ing guide­lines for the use of social media and elec­tron­ic devices dur­ing the work of the Chap­ter, and advice for respect­ing pri­va­cy. He also explained how to receive and use var­i­ous doc­u­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Direc­to­ry, which estab­lish­es the process­es to be car­ried out each day.
After a short break, the Capit­u­lars elect­ed Fri­ar Emanuele RIMOLI as Record­ing Sec­re­tary; Fri­ar Emanuele made the appeal and offi­cial­ly start­ed the Chapter.
Let me remind you that after the day of prayer, the work is expect­ed to start with an eval­u­a­tion the Order’s activ­i­ties and oper­a­tions over the last six years, in par­tic­u­lar by means of the report of the out­go­ing Gen­er­al Minister.
The new Min­is­ter Gen­er­al will be elect­ed on Sat­ur­day, May 25, to be fol­lowed by the elec­tion of the mem­bers of the Gen­er­al Definitory.
We will then move to Coll­e­valen­za and pro­ceed to the dis­cus­sion and approval of the Gen­er­al Statutes, Fran­cis­can Dis­ci­ple­ship and the Ratio Studiorum.
Final­ly, today, Fri­ar Tim­o­thy gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on the vot­ing pro­ce­dures and invit­ed each of the Fed­er­a­tions to have a meet­ing. He remind­ed every­one that the day would end with Ves­pers and dinner.
Let me inform you that the Chap­ter is com­prised of 91 Capit­u­lars and 13 audi­tors (who do not have vot­ing rights).
The Fed­er­a­tions rep­re­sent the geo­graph­i­cal and lin­guis­tic ori­gins of the Capit­u­lars: AFCOF (African Fed­er­a­tion of Con­ven­tu­al Fran­cis­cans) 9 Capit­u­lars; CEF (Cen­tralis Europae Foed­er­a­tio) 11 Capit­u­lars; CFF (Con­ven­tu­al Fran­cis­can Fed­er­a­tion) 13 Capit­u­lars; FALC (Fed­eración Améri­ca Lati­na Con­ven­tuales) 16 Capit­u­lars; FAMC (Fed­er­a­tion of Asian Minor Con­ven­tu­als) 8 Capit­u­lars; FEMO (Foed­er­a­tio Europae Medi­ae et Ori­en­tal­is) 19 Capit­u­lars; and FIMP (Fed­er­azione Inter­mediter­ranea Min­istri Provin­ciali) 28 Capitulars.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler