Kinshasa, January 27, 2018

Dear Sisters Dear Friends,

« If the Lord does not watch over the city, in vain do the watchmen keep vigil. »
Ps 126:1b

Many of you have been hoping to receive some news. Finally I can share something with you. Thank you for your prayers for us.

On Sunday, January 21, 2018, while at Mass, even though we hadn’t received the final blessing nor even instructions about the upcoming march, we were caught by surprise when tear gas came streaming into the church. It was flying everywhere. We hurried about the church looking for people who had brought margarine to be applied to faces. When they stopped using the tear gas, the celebrant, the pastor of St. Augustine’s, courageously took up the cross, walked in front of the Christian community, and began to march. We followed him.

There was a crowd of non-Catholics waiting outside to join us. Within minutes the police attacked us. They grabbed the priest, threw him down into the mud and tore his liturgical vestments. Then the crowd began to disperse. Some courageous young people, however, kept marching up to a point about 10 minutes from the church. There they were ambushed; the police began firing their guns at point blank range; one of the young people was hit and died. They brought his body back to the parish.

January 23, 2018

Thanks to the help of the Augustinians of the Assumption in USA and France, as well as the Oblates Sisters of the Assumption, a young woman has the opportunity to study abroad in Nîmes, France for a school year. Veronika Jaster is a junior in high school from Northborough, Massachusetts, and she is the daughter of Tomasz Jaster, who works for the Assumptionists in their Boston headquarters.

Veronika is staying with a host family who is very caring and welcoming, and she attends the Institut Emmanuel d’Alzon with her host sister. The Institute is a private Catholic school that is composed of a middle school, high school, vocational school and university. Veronika is studying in the high school’s Literary branch, where most of her courses focus on the humanities and the arts. Veronika also plays the cello in the high school’s music band.

She often visits the city’s Assumptionist communities and spends time with the Brothers and Sisters. One of the Sisters gave her a tour of the local Emmanuel d’Alzon museum, and Veronika found it very interesting to learn about the history of d’Alzon’s childhood, his mission, and his legacy that continues today all over the world.

A few days ago the first rays of sunlight returned to the Arctic Circle, the first since November, and the new home of Fr.  Barry Bercier who became pastor of a Inuit parish in Igloolik,  Nunanvut (Canada) last summer (see http://www.assumption.us/news/1578-from-north-of-the-border-way-north).  Recently he wrote describing some of his activities in the far north.

“….every day, sometime twice a day, kids come over here wanting to eat, and so I fetch them soup or chili or eggs, pancakes, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, etc., and give them hot chocolate, tea or coffee. (Kids up here typically drink coffee).  The tea and coffee they load with sugar, enormous, breathtaking amounts of sugar.  I try to persuade them to ease up on it, but everybody up here is hooked.  I was talking to one of the young hunters (he should be in school but he prefers to be out on the land—and it seems to me it’s just the place he should be)... He said about ‘pop’— what they call Coca Cola—‘When I’m out hunting, it keeps me warm.’  Makes some sense, but still, they take in way to much sugar.  And there’s no dentist in town, so the effects are evident whenever they smile. There is a project for feeding people, They call it ‘Feeding Nunavut.’  They used the parish hall once for one of their feasts.”

Fr. Xavier, second from left with Fr. General, second from right, and the other members of the Istanbul community

January 9, 2018

Source: La Croix

Fr. Xavier Jacob, renowned specialist of Islam in Turkey, has died.

A pastor of Christians in Turkey, this Assumptionist distinguished himself by his studies of Islam in Turkey and by his translations of liturgical texts into Turkish.

Fr. Xavier Jacob, 89 years old, died on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 26, 2017, the same day as another apostle of the Christian-Muslim dialogue, Fr. Maurice Borrmans.

Born in Alsatia on January 15, 1927, Fr. Xavier was ordained an Assumptionist in 1953 and was described then as « a friendly and serviceable brother, whose intelligence is only equaled by his modesty.”

After spending some time at the headquarters for the Revue des études byzantines (today located at the Institut Catholique of Paris), he was assigned to the Assumptionist apostolate in Turkey. He would then spend 54 years there --- 40 years in Ankara and 14 in Kadikoy/Istanbul (formerly known as Chalcedon)--- where he ministered to Christians there and to the small remnant of Christians in Konya (formerly Iconium).