(Università Pontificia Salesiana, Roma) – On April 25, Tuesday, the feast day of St. Mark and in Italy a civil holiday commemorating the liberation from Nazi-Fascism, the feast of the Mary Seat of Wisdom (UPS) VP was celebrated. The “Blessed Zeffirino Namuncurà” community, which is a new presence as far as location is concerned, was chosen as the venue for the feast. In fact, the International Community of Theology Students, which until last June was located at Via Tiburtina 994, inside the Salesian Institute Teresa Gerini, has been at Via della Bufalotta 550, 4 km from the Salesian university (UPS Rome), since last September.
The work was an institute and land of the Guanellians, which was purchased last year by the Rector Major and his Council as a home for the community of Theology students, a new headquarters for the General Postulation, and to provide hospitality, especially for confreres and members of the Salesian Family.
The festive day was spent under the banner of gratitude, important jubilee anniversaries of many Salesians were celebrated, and a sense of fraternity and belonging was cemented among Salesians from so many Provinces and Vice-Provinces who live and study in the eight communities that make up the UPS Rome VP. In total, more than 270 people attended.
“We had the joy of having with us the General Councilor for Formation, Fr. Ivo Coelho, and the General Economer of the Congregation, Br. Jean Paul Muller,” said the Director of the community on Via della Bufalotta, Fr. Silvio Roggia. “In recalling the many reasons for gratitude, Fr. Maria Arokiam Kanaga, Superior of the Vice-Province, referred to the hundreds of people that each one represents, because they are always sent by a community, and to the thousands who in various ways will be reached by the fruits of these years of formation and study.”
This high-intensity internationality also characterizes the host community, whose patron is Blessed Zeffirino Namuncurá: right now, it is home to 49 confreres from 28 countries and 24 Salesian circumscriptions.
As Fr. Coelho pointed out in his homily, there are values that unite and make the many differences in culture and origin proper to each one’s history become mutual wealth. No culture is an absolute. The absolute is God and His love, and in Him it is possible to meet and enrich each other – not despite differences, but precisely through the gifts and also the labors that each one brings.
One day is only a tiny fraction of the annual calendar, but undoubtedly the day on Tuesday, April 25, 2023, was memorable for the family atmosphere that everyone present together was able to build, experience, and give to each other. “In its own way, it was a synodal experience of the first magnitude,” Fr. Roggia concludes.