INSTITUTE OF THE DAUGHTERS OF MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS
founded by St. John Bosco and
by St. Mary Domenica Mazzarello
No. 948
It is the time of joy and hope
Dearest Sisters,
We are concluding our first Council Meeting lived under the sign of getting to know each other, of
evaluating General Chapter XXIII, and of preparing for the tasks that await us. You have always been
present in our encounters, both in prayer and in reflection, and we have reached out to you with
affection. We gratefully recall your active participation in the Chapter event and we are thankful for
the messages that you sent. It was beautiful to feel you closeness, expressed with prayer, interest,
offering, and on the part of some Sisters, even the gift of their life. Your support encouraged us and
now accompanies us at the beginning of the new mission the Lord entrusts to us.
The Chapter was a great experience of communion and of the involvement of the entire Institute. In
this climate, let us continue together as community to live the important inspirations the Holy Spirit
has suggested to us.
The title of the Chapter Document, ‘Broaden Your Vision…Missionaries of Joy and Hope with the
Young’ is a call and a commitment to actualize the Chapter, which was penetrated by a strong
missionary dynamism. Like the disciples of Emmaus, let us reread our life, marked by study, and at
times by fatigue, in the light of the encounter with Jesus. He always takes the initiative to reach us, to
accompany us, and to urge us to go out toward the near and far peripheries in the awareness that
with the young, and together with the educating community, we are missionary disciples of the
Gospel.
The historical time we are living is rich with signs and calls. In particular, the Year of Consecrated Life
and the bicentennial of Don Bosco’s birth are gifts and calls to make our identity as consecrated
persons in the Church and in today’s society shine more brightly. These events reawaken in each of
us the first love that brought us to respond to the Lord with joy and enthusiasm. This is the secret of
vocational fruitfulness that still arouses in the young the desire to live radically the following of Jesus
in consecrated Salesian life.
The short Council meeting lived this week will be followed by the plenum from January 19 to March
28, 2015, in which we will elaborate the Council Program for the period of 2015-2020. We are
counting on the prayers of each of you for this significant moment that will help us to actualize the
shared journeys indicated in the Chapter Document.
We express our deep gratitude to the Sisters of the Council who in these years have enriched the
Institute with their fraternal and competent presence. Thank you Sr. Emilia Musatti, Sr. Maria
Américo Rolim, Sr. María del Carmen Canales, Sr. Giuseppina Teruggi, Sr. Carla Castellino, Sr.
Marie-Dominique Mwema and Sr. Kathleen Taylor for their gift of communion, spiritual depth, love for
the young, and untiring dedication. We invoke the blessing of God and of Mary Help of Christians for
the fruitfulness of the mission that will be entrusted to them.
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Now we wish to give a personal message that we hope will reach the heart of each one of you. As we
thank you again for the fraternal way in which you have accompanied us, we commit ourselves to
walk together with you in the new obedience that the Lord has given us through the Chapter
Assembly.
A Choral Message
Dearest Sisters, with joy I wish to reach each of you, every community, the young people, and all
those who share your mission. With simplicity, I express to you my readiness to walk together in this
new six-year term.
Mary Help of Christians is the Mother and true Superior of the Institute. May she help me to be a
good Vicar, living constantly in her company as Mother Mazzarello did. May Mary guard my ‘yes’ in
her heart to offer it to Jesus together with every ‘yes’ said with faith and love every day by each of
you. At Christmas we receive Jesus with simplicity and humility. He is the source of our joy and our
hope.
Feel me every close to you with affection, trust, and gratitude. May the Lord bless you!
Sister Yvonne Reungoat
My wish is that you may live trustfully in the certainty of the presence of the Holy Spirit who works in
the Church, in the Institute, in humanity, and sustains the young in their search of the future. May
Mary help us to discern her voice among the many voices of each day, to discover her call to ‘go out’,
to overcome fears and uncertainties in order to be joyfully available in the spirit of the ‘da mihi animas
cetera tolle’. I thank you and greet you with affection.
Sister Chiara Cazzuola
It affords me great joy to think that the same Spirit that was present in the Chapter and that has
accompanied us, indicating the journeys to follow in order to live fidelity to the charism today with
passion, is our Formator. It is He who, with delicacy and firmness, shapes our heart to make it daily
more like the heart of Jesus. In this way, we can truly be a gift to each other and to the educating
community. It is beautiful to listen together to Mother Mazzarello who tells us, “Courage. Go ahead
with a great and generous heart!” I wish you all a fruitful year of Consecrated Life!
With a warm embrace!
Sister M. Nieves Reboso
In communion with Mother and the Council Sisters, I too enter into your home with a greeting and
much gratitude. I invoke for all our educating communities the grace to “advance on a journey of
pastoral and missionary conversion”. These words Pope Francis addressed to the whole Church are
for us an urgent call to renew the passion and commitment for our evangelizing educational mission,
in any situation and in any work in which we live the Salesian charism. Mary Help of Christians
precedes us in evangelization with her style of service and daring.
Sister Maria Teresa Cocco
Thank you from my heart for your greetings and prayers for the new mandate that the Lord has
entrusted to me in the Salesian Family Department. I pray that in this Bicentenary of Don Bosco’s
birth, our homage may be that of giving life to his dream: to be one Family with different faces, but
with the same goal, the salvation of the young. I pray that Our Lady will help us to broaden our vision
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to see with hope the multiple opportunities that lay vocations offer us and promote them with courage
and decisiveness in our communities. I greet with much affection in communion.
Sister María Luisa Miranda
Once again, the Lord entrusts this great mission to me. Together with the missionary disciples, we
can be bearers, with new enthusiasm and fire in our hearts, of the Good News of Jesus, of His
tenderness, of His love, and of His mercy for all peoples. Thank you for your prayers. May we all be
FMA impassioned by the mission that the Lord entrusts to us, especially for His preferred ones, the
poor. I embrace you with affection and wish you a good Advent!
Sister Alaíde Deretti
I thank each of you for your sincere and fraternal words that console the heart and for the prayers that
sustain me in this mission. I am near to each of you in seeking to collaborate with the Holy Spirit,
aware of the beauty of living in this complex world. I wish you a fruitful Advent season, the time of
Baby Jesus who makes Himself a tender and authentic Word. With a grateful embrace!
Sister M. Helena Moreira
I reach you with great affection, dear Sisters, and I wish you much good, in deep communion. Let us
go ahead without fear and with courage and joy on the road of solidarity and sharing. God is greater
than our possibilities and fills our poverty with His riches.
Sister Vilma Tallone
Together with Mother and all the Council Sisters, at the start of this Post-Chapter time, I desire to
cross the oceans, to simply enter into each community to tell you ‘thank you’ for your closeness and
trust. God always reaches us with unexpected calls. He is a God who does not cease to surprise us,
to renew us, and to transform us. Like Mary, I want to be attentive to the Spirit, to entrust to Him and
to you, Sisters scattered in the world, the new mission that awaits me. I ask for the gift of your
prayers so that ‘together’ we may put into action all our resources and be with the young ‘witnesses’
of joy and hope.
Sister Paola Battagliola
I joyfully send you a greeting full of hope that embraces the miracle of life as was the embrace of
Mary and Elizabeth. This embrace makes me ‘broaden my vision’ to all of you, committed to give
yourselves in the reality of a world searching for credibility, trust, and courage, for the poorest young
people. Thank you for being there. Together we will continue our witness as happy consecrated
Salesians in a Church that urges us to ‘go out’. Holy Advent journey! I greet you in our Liberator
God, entrusting myself to your prayers for this second six-year term as a Visiting Councillor.
Sister Silvia Boullosa
Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. I would like to be a small instrument through which
the universality and greatness of salvation and of the Institute is gathered.
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God always likes to use the littleness of the person as He did with Mary and with Mother Mazzarello.
Thus, I unite my hymn of hope to the chorus of our whole beautiful and great Family: “He looked at
the humility of his servant. From now on, all generations will call me blessed!”
Sister Maria Assunta Inoue
Our Family is beautiful and grand. Its beauty is in the fact that it was founded on the solid rock of
Jesus Christ, and it belongs wholly to Mary. I pray that we may be like her, attentive to the needs of
all those we meet in our day and respond to them with generosity. May everyone find in us a home
that receives, persons who witness the prophecy of encounters that generate joy, love, and hope.
May the Lord help us to be leaven and salt in this society, giving vigour and taste to daily life, walking
together toward holiness.
Sister Chantal Ruzagiriza Mukase
I wish to reach each of you to express my gratitude for the many messages full of prayer and
encouragement. I joyfully await the possibility of meeting you in your realities along the way that the
Lord is preparing for me. I wish you a good post-Chapter journey. The Help of Christians indicates
the way to become ever more “homes of joy and of hope” where the young may experience the
beauty of our consecrated Salesian life. Holy Advent!
Sister Phyllis Neves
With a renewed “yes” to the Lord’s call, I invite you, dear Sisters, to look at Mary. Let us listen to her
when she tells us, “Do what He tells you”. Let us follow the way that the Holy Spirit suggests to us to
be prophetic witnesses and educational presences with the children and young people, especially the
poorest and neediest. They will help us to go out toward new horizons of true conversion and
authentic pastoral commitment.
Sister Lucy Rose Ozhukayil
“There is a Marian style in the Church’s evangelizing activity”, affirms Pope Francis in ‘Evangelium
Gaudium’, no. 288. Our post-Chapter journey will be fruitful as well in the measure in which we let
ourselves be guided by Mary, Woman of the believing glance and of genuine humanity. May she be
our teacher on the journey of discernment and of courageous choices that make us missionaries in
the youth peripheries. I will remember each of you for who you are in the song of the Magnificat.
Sister Marija Peče
I wish us a journey of joyful fidelity to our Rule of life. This is the evident sign that we love Don Bosco.
He gave it to us because he knows what Mary Help of Christians wants from us. From this fidelity
come joy, communion among us, the efficacy of our mission of evangelization, and the vocational
fruitfulness of our life and of our communities.
I greet you with affection and in deep communion of prayer.
Sister Piera Cavaglià
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In this year of Consecrated Life we feel particularly united to Pope Francis who proclaimed it so that it
may be more meaningful and prophetic. Thus as FMA, we are called upon to revitalize the charism of
Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello, to be ever more a home that, with the young, finds new ways to
evangelize and give to the local Church and to society a qualified educational support. This commits
us to live the post-Chapter journey in the light of the ‘Scrutate Letter’ emanated from the Congregation
for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, and to participate in ecclesial events
organized at various levels during this year of grace.
Let us also take this wonderful opportunity to make the young know the beauty of a life totally handed
over to love.
In the Bicentennial of Don Bosco’s birth, we are all invited to celebrate with special solemnity the feast
of our Holy Founder together with the young, united as Salesian Family and in the Church, involving
all those who feel identified with the Salesian charism or who recognize Don Bosco as an educator.
The Feast of the Immaculate that he celebrated with particular fervour as the providential beginning of
his work, will find us united in renewed trust in Our Lady and in the prayer of the Hail Mary. She
opens the heart to see reality from the perspective of the periphery where Jesus continues to
incarnate Himself. He awaits us in our sisters, in the poorest young people, and in the persons with
whom we share our daily journey to give hope to a world that yearns for peace. With these
sentiments, we wish you a holy Christmas.
The greeting is extended to all the educating communities, to our families, to our Salesian confreres,
to the various groups of the Salesian Family, and to all with whom we share the grace of proclaiming
the Gospel.
We write to you in the centenary of the first Circular sent by Mother Catherine Daghero to every Sister
of the Institute, dated November 24, 1914, and then continued every month until today. We recognize
how much this uninterrupted communication has favoured communion in the Institute and we commit
ourselves to continue this beautiful family tradition. I thank you for the reception you express each
time in its regard. We pray that you continue to be a little light in daily life.
May the Lord and the Immaculate Help of Christians bless you!
Rome, 24 November 2014
La Madre and the Council Sisters
Attached is the composition of the new General Council.
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