Saturday, June 15

Today’s Mass was presided over by the new Assistant General for the Federatio Europae Mediae et Orientalis (FEMO) Friar Tomáš LESŇÁK. 

Fri­ar Jude WINKLER drew his homi­ly from the Sec­ond Let­ter of St. Paul to the Corinthi­ans, regard­ing our being new crea­tures in the Risen Christ. Thus the Chap­ter has tried to give a new inter­pre­ta­tion to the jour­ney of our con­fr­eres.  How­ev­er, the indi­ca­tions the Capit­u­lars have writ­ten will remain life­less on the page if they are not lived in faith, if the fri­ars do not open up to the strength of the Holy Spirit.
Fri­ar Ryszard WRÓBEL, the Del­e­gate Gen­er­al for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, pre­sent­ed the lat­est devel­op­ments in the Order’s sta­tis­tics. Data con­cern­ing 2014 was made avail­able to the Capit­u­lars, so they could make a com­par­i­son with our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. There has been a decrease in the num­ber of con­fr­eres, but we still num­ber around 4000 fri­ars. He then pre­sent­ed some instruc­tions con­cern­ing the web­site of the Order; how to find news and doc­u­ments that may be of inter­est to the con­fr­eres.  In par­tic­u­lar, there is now data show­ing the com­po­si­tion of the Fed­er­a­tions and Jurisdictions.
The Cus­tos of the Sacred Con­vent in Assisi, Fri­ar Mau­ro GAMBETTI, addressed the Capit­u­lars and gave them a gen­er­al pic­ture of what our Seraph­ic Father St. Fran­cis rep­re­sents today. The world and the Church expect the evan­gel­i­cal val­ues ​​that our founder lived to be pro­claimed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the way that Pope Fran­cis has been pro­claim­ing them.  The Gen­er­al Cus­tody of Assisi has six­ty four fri­ars, fifty-three of whom live in the Sacred Con­vent. Only twen­ty two of them are from Italy. The Cus­tody is always in need of help and so in future, the Juris­dic­tions are asked to send more con­fr­eres. Final­ly the Cus­tos gave each of the Capit­u­lars poster-sized pho­tos of the Basil­i­ca and the Tomb of St. Francis.
Then, Fri­ar Jack MARDESIC from the Provin­cial Cus­tody of St. Bonaven­ture in France and Bel­gium spoke on behalf of those Capit­u­lars who were reli­gious broth­ers. He remind­ed the Capit­u­lars to be mind­ful of the impor­tance fos­ter­ing voca­tions for those called to be reli­gious broth­ers as well as those called to the priesthood.
An “Open Let­ter to All the Fra­ter­ni­ties of the Order from the Fri­ars Gath­ered at the 202^nd Ordi­nary Gen­er­al Chap­ter of 2019” was pre­sent­ed in the Aula. All the con­fr­eres were invit­ed to be signs of reconciliation—friars in har­mo­ny with all of cre­ation, who desire to bring peace to our neigh­bor­ing broth­ers and sis­ters, espe­cial­ly those in pover­ty, liv­ing on the out­skirts of the world.
In ful­fil­ment of its final duties, the Chap­ter assem­bly elect­ed the Gen­er­al Econom, recon­firm­ing Fri­ar Nico­la ROSA from the Province of St. Nicholas and St. Ange­lo in Italy (Puglia). Fri­ar Leszek ŁUCZKANIN of the Province of St. Max­i­m­il­ian M. Kolbe in Poland (Gdańsk) was elect­ed the Gen­er­al Exac­tor. The Gen­er­al Defin­i­to­ry will then choose oth­er fri­ars and lay con­sul­tants to form a team for the Gen­er­al Finan­cial Office.
Fri­ar Car­los TROVARELLI, the Min­is­ter Gen­er­al, made some open­ing remarks to the fri­ars and thanked the Capit­u­lars for the fra­ter­nal spir­it with which they car­ried out their work dur­ing this month togeth­er. He invit­ed them all to col­lab­o­rate in imple­ment­ing what had been pro­posed and vot­ed on, in par­tic­u­lar, the open­ing of new mis­sion­ary presences.
After­wards, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Fri­ar Tomasz SZYMCZAK, thanked all those who worked for the Chapter.

Then the Capit­u­lars prayed for those who died dur­ing the last six years. At 12:30 p.m., the Min­is­ter Gen­er­al gave his final bless­ing and the Ordi­nary Gen­er­al Chap­ter was concluded.

Fri­ar Aure­lio ERCOLI, Chronicler

 

As we pre­pare to depart from our chap­ter, we hear words in the First Read­ing that could almost be our com­mis­sion­ing, “We are ambas­sadors for Christ, as if God were appeal­ing through us.”  We are a new cre­ation in Christ.  We no longer judge any­one accord­ing to the flesh.
This is the vision of a world made new in Christ, which is still in the process of being formed in the world.  As her­alds and ambas­sadors, we go forth to pro­claim in word and deed, to the fri­ars and to the world, that the world can be healed in God’s love.  We promise to live as a new cre­ation, filled with the love and vital­i­ty and free­dom that only Christ can give.  We promise to view those around us who are fol­low­ing the wrong path not as ene­mies of the Gospel, but rather as broth­ers and sis­ters who need Christ’s love through us to find their way again.
And so, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be rec­on­ciled to God.  We implore you on behalf of Christ, share the Good News to a bro­ken world that it, too, can be rec­on­ciled to our God.

Amen.