By Gianni Criveller, Monza, Italy
The Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions [PIME] theological seminary in Monza, near Milan, in Lombardy, northern Italy, scheduled a Great Prayer on Saturday December 4, at 11.00am [6.00pm Hong Kong time], at the Cathedral of Monza, for Hong Kong’s new bishop, Bishop Stephen Chow Sau-yan SJ, and the city’s Catholic community.
The rector and the principal of the seminary, Father Luigi Bonalumi and Father Gianni Criveller, were both missionaries in Hong Kong and they feel the importance of this historic passage. They are temporarily in Italy now, and long to return to their Hong Kong mission.
Due to the strict quarantine regulations still in force in Hong Kong, it is impossible for them to be physical present in Hong Kong, but they are there with all their heart, with all their soul and with all their mind.
Nearly 60 theological students and their friends were invited to join in the prayer. Members of Christian communities in the territory were also invited to attend. The event will be available on the Monza PIME Seminary’s YouTube channel [and will remain accessible after the episcopal ordination].
The prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of the Peoples, Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle sent a video message to the event in Monza. Representatives of the Archdiocese of Milan are also slated to attend. It is indeed a spiritual and prayerful event, which will include visuals of Bishop Chow’s ordination Hong Kong, which took place just three hours earlier.
Father Renzo Milanese, a pime missionary in Hong Kong presently travelling in Italy, will share his thoughts and illustrate the spiritual state of Hong Kong’s Catholic community. One Hong Kong Catholic layperson, presently working in Italy, will also share her thoughts and feelings.
This is an exclusively spiritual event, relying on the power of prayer and invoking the gifts of the Holy Spirit on the new bishop and on the Catholic community and the people of Hong Kong.
The initiative of PIME Theological seminary is an expression of PIME’s commitment to Hong Kong. Its missionaries have been evangelising in the Pearl of the East since 1858, 16 years after the arrival of first Catholic missionary in the then-newly established British colony.
PIME considers Hong Kong one of its most prestigious and much loved missions. A large PIME community is still present in Hong Kong today, bearing witness to the gospel at the service of local Church.
PIME missionaries are aware that the long awaited consecration of the new bishop called for prayer and solidarity. Bishop Chow has a challenging task ahead of him.
We will be gathered in the beautiful St. John Baptist Cathedral in Monza, ideally contiguous with the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Hong Kong, because we believe in the power of prayer and in the communion of those who entrust their lives to the Lord Jesus.
The PIME international theological missionary seminary, where Father Bonalumi and Father Criveller are currently serving, includes 55 candidates to the missionary life from a dozen of countries from around the world. It is, in itself, a microcosm representing the catholicity of the Church and the universality of its mission.
At the end of theological training, the candidates receive the baccalaureate and are ordained priests [or in fewer cases lay missionaries] for the evangelisation. The school of theology also includes 20 or so students from other religious congregations, or laypersons from the territory. Our students offer their missionary and pastoral services in local parishes or social services centres.
