Union Of Catholic Apostolate Congress 2010
From April 8-13 over 200 laywomen, men, nuns, brothers and priests of the Pallottine Family gathered outside Rome for the Second Congress of the UAC.
We came from 20 countries and from 5 continents, meeting old friends and making new ones. It was a wonderful experience of community in prayer, discussion, conversation, music and laughter.
In the presentations we listened to we travelled from the head to the heart and arrived at a place where head and heart came together to seek a Church that is both Catholic and inclusive. Highlights included a sharing by Monica Urban, a wife and mother of five, who radiated the light of the Holy Spirit, revealing to us how motherhood is the closest thing to God that can be found in this world. She didn’t say this herself but she witnessed to it by her presence.
Two young people, Christoph and Monica – from Germany and Poland – shared their perspective and showed us what good communication is like – lively, engaging and brief. Their presence also reminded us how vital the young are in the community of Christians, and how we need more of them for the spreading of the Gospel.
Angelo Londero, a Pallottine priest and lecturer from Brazil, brought us to our feet with his head and heart vision. He dreams of a “pilgrim Church, always on a journey, inserted into the history of persons and of cultures. A pilgrim Church in the world, with time to stop for those who have fallen on the way, who will tend to their wounds without a fixed time frame in which to conclude her journey.”
Bishop Seamus Freeman led us in the celebration of Mass in St.Peter’s Basilica on Divine Mercy Sunday. The vision of St. Vincent Pallotti, alive and well in 2010, found its way to the main altar of St. Peter’s and symbolically to the centre of the Church – not to stay there but to move from there to wherever the wind of the Spirit will carry us.
The experience for me has confirmed the conviction that there is an unsurpassable strength when the lay faithful, religious, priests and hierarchy come together in communion.
As Provincial of the Irish Province of the Mother of Divine Love, it was gratifying to be there with people from the lands of our Province – Ireland, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda – including two diocesan priests and a nun from the Good Samaritan Sisters in Uganda.
It was especially gratifying to see my good friend and brother, Derry Murphy, at the heart of this gathering as its President and to hear the crowd chant his name in gratitude at the end of the Congress.
