Religious still ‘prepare for the unknown’

Sydney
7 July 2002

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Religious still ‘prepare for the unknown’

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Religious still ‘prepare for the unknown’

Today’s religious have no less a pioneering role than their congregational founders, said the new president of the Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes, Sr Bernadette Keating (pictured).

“Despite the adversities, there is an abiding sense of God’s mission in the world and a courage and preparedness to set out into the unknown,” she said.

Sr Bernadette, congregational leader of the Presentation Sisters in Victoria, has been president of the Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes Victoria for the past two years.

She was elected president of the Australian Conference, the peak body representing Catholic and Anglican religious congregations in Australia, by the leaders of the 110 congregations who participated at the conference’s national assembly in Hobart last month.

She succeeds Br Michael Godfrey, who had been president since 2000. He did not seek re-election as he has been elected to the general council of the Christian Brothers in Rome.

Sr Bernadette recognises the challenges currently facing religious congregations, including reorienting their mission to respond to new conditions; carrying out their mission with fewer and older members; and the handing over of institutions to lay management.

“We religious are part of the Church today, responding to the same currents of uncertainties that are being experienced everywhere in church and society,” she said.

“We are not sitting around crying … we know that the race must go on, and that it is the race of the reign of God, the ministry, the being Church that must go on in different ways,” Sr Bernadette said.

Religious men and women know that it is the mission which is important, she said.

“We take heart from the stories of our congregational founders who invariably encountered setbacks, and overcame adversity and institutional resistance – in some cases excommunication – to give witness to the prophetic voice,” she said.

“I see religious today in no less a pioneering role. Despite the adversities, there is an abiding sense of God’s mission in the world and a courage and preparedness to set out into the unknown.”

Sr Bernadette’s term will run until mid-2004.