Conversations at the Assumptionist Center - Feb 1, 2015 (Sunday)

As the Church begins to celebrate the Year of Consecrated Life, the Assumptionist Center in Brighton has begun hosting three Sunday “Conversations… this semester around the distinct forms and traditions of consecrated life in the Catholic Church.

At our first session, which focused on the cloistered contemplative tradition, the community, residents and guests welcomed two Poor Clare nuns who shared what is means to them to be contemplatives in today’s world.

(On the occasion of his ordination to the priesthood this past December in Sokode, Togo, we conducted an interview with him.)

- Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

- My name is Serge Patrick Mabou Simo and I am Cameroonian, from the diocese of Bafoussam in the district of West-Cameroon. I am the youngest in my family, the "Benjamin." After completing my novitiate and my philosophy in the Congo (DRC) and my theology in Nairobi, I came here to Sokode where I was ordained a deacon in June, 2013 and worked mostly with young people both at Our Lady of the Assumption Parish and at St. Augustine Youth Center both of which are run by the Assumptionists in the city.

Assumption College’s Rome campus has been named one of the 10 "best study abroad programs in America” by the independent college rankings journal Best College Reviews.

Calling it one of “the most desirable study abroad opportunities” in the United States, Best College Reviews noted that Assumption’s Rome campus was “unique” to the College and “provides students a personal experience.”

“It is an honor to have Assumption’s Rome campus nationally recognized as one of the best study abroad programs in the United States in only its second year of operation,” said Assumption College President Francesco C. Cesareo, Ph.D. “Our students experience Rome and all of Italy as part of a learning community—living, studying and traveling together, enjoying a transformative adventure as they grow both personally and intellectually. They can stand where the classical liberal arts tradition was born and influenced the development of Western Civilization.”

Ignorance of the faith -- indifference to it -- outright unbelief. The Church in a state of ruin. A century of violence and political turmoil.

In the eyes of Father Emmanuel d'Alzon, this was the situation in France in the decades after the French Revolution. Yet in 1835 -- three years after the struggle and tragedy of the June Rebellion depicted in "Les Miserables" -- Father d'Alzon had an insight. "They say the world is evil," he wrote to a colleague. "No doubt, passion turns it away from what is good. But I believe most of all that the world is ignorant."

Convinced that the world's intellectual crisis was at the heart of its social and political crises, Father d'Alzon had the inspiration to found a religious congregation that would advance the Kingdom of God through "education in all its forms."