Commission for Information + Communication - Rome, Nov. 09

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Two days ago I arrived at our General House (Headquarters) in Rome to meet with 5 other members of an international De La Mennais Brothers commission for Communication + Information (4 Bros. + 2 lay people from France, Uganda, Canada, Uruguay, Spain + me from England).

The other five members of our team and a Brother (2nd left)
from the General house community that has welcomed us for these 5 days of meetings.

On the agenda:

- looking at what initiatives are already being undertaken by Provinces and/or individual Bros. as regards web sites, blogs, social networking, publications of all types...
- learning from initiatives outside of the congregation (other congregations, secular or church-based organisations...)
- imagining the future of the congregation and what needs to be put in place to respond to future needs in relation to our charism of working with young people
- all sorts of other related topics, including training for those who may wish to set up a blog or a web site, or who would like to learn more about the advantages and dangers of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, etc... (these are areas I may well end up helping with).


We will also be visiting the Vatican Radio station, which I am really looking forward to. Apart from that, very little time for tourism. To give you an idea, today we started our meetings at 8.45am and tonight we finished at 10.40pm!!! Ouf!! But, it was a wonderful time of fraternal sharing of ideas and experiences, of learning from each other, of laughter, of hope-filled dynamism, of prayer...

The General House community is made up of the General Council (4 Bros., only one is here right now, the Superior General Bro. Yannick Houssay (France)), 6 other permanent Brothers (French, Spanish and Ugandan) and 2 other Ugandan Brothers preparing Doctorates.

Bro. Gérard (France), Superior of the General House community.


Bro. Vincent (Uganda), studying for a Doctorate and doing his best to hide from my camera!

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