Fr. Jean-François Petit, "Devenir plus humain avec Saint Augustin," Paris, Salvator, 2015, 183 p.

The author, an Assumptionist priest, is a specialist in the thought of St. Augustine. In this tome, he tries to show the meaning of the essential values of earthly existence by plumbing the depths of Augustine's voluminous writings. Although he is a citizen of an other age, Petit considers Augustine's thought ever relevant. In essence he argues that to be complete and authentic a human being necessarily includes a spiritual dimension, one that reveals a being moving toward the Absolute. Petit's audience is as much lay-people as it is members of the clergy and religious communities.

Jean-François Petit offers a movement with 12 points describing attitudes to be developed if one is to become truly human. I will not try to describe each of the 12 point but will try rather to get to the essentials of what is required. First, one must nourish a desire to be enlightened and to admit that it is in the Word  of God that the truth that one is looking for is to be found. The goal is to make choices that will allow one to know oneself better and to recognize in what divine happiness consists. For Augustine, inspired by Isaiah, one must understand in order to believe and believe in order to understand; therefore it is faith that leads us to understand the Word.

The Bayard group is considered to be one of the jewels of the Catholic publishing world. Founded in France in the 19^th century, where it is the number one Catholic publisher, it now features an international presence, with over 150 magazines, journals, and reviews in more than 15 languages. In France its two flagship publications, the daily newspaper, La Croix, and the weekly, Le Pèlerin, have been in print for more than 125 years. Its publications span the chronological spectrum from early childhood to senior editions. In North America, Bayard publishes in English and French, with titles such as Catholic Digest, Living with Christ, Catechist, Living Faith, Chirp, Owl, and others. Over the years it has acquired such respected and well-known companies as Twenty-Third Publications, Catholic Digest, Novalis, Peter Li, and Christian Communications.

For the last several years, the children and youth in our Faith Formation programs have undertaken an Assumptionist project to support through their Lenten almsgiving.  They were asked to set aside some allowance or money they might use for a movie, snacks, new game, new clothes, etc. to help with the Beni School Project in the Congo. It was an opportunity for children to reach out to children.

A poster displaying some pictures sent to us by Fr. John Franck, A.A. was hung in each classroom. This gave us the opportunity to talk to students about the civil war waging in the Congo with villagers being forced to flee and take refuge in Beni. They were saddened to learn that many of the refugees were children who were orphans of war. They also could see progress being made on a new school for 240 children. Each week they remembered them in prayer.

Gilbert & Sullivan’s Classic Operetta to Showcase the Best of Assumption’s Artistic Talent

WORCESTER, MA (March 17, 2016)— Assumption College’s Department of Art, Music and Theatre will present the Tony Award-winning musical Pirates of Penzance, the College’s 8th annual spring production, at The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts on April 22-24 featuring Assumption students, alumni, and members of the community.

Pirates of Penzance is W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's most popular comic opera. Set during the reign Queen Victoria, Pirates of Penzance tells the story of Frederic, who is mistakenly indentured as an apprentice to a pirate rather than a pilot as a child. Having completed his 21st year, and thus his apprenticeship, Frederic announces that he loathes piracy and will be leaving, in hopes of finding a suitable wife. He meets Mabel, the daughter of Major-General Stanley, and the two fall instantly in love. However, Frederic soon learns of a mistake that forces him to return to the pirates, holding on to Mabel’s promise that she will wait for him until he officially comes of age.

French by birth, Fr. Bernard Holzer, member of the Assumptionist congregation, has been stationed in the Philippines for the past ten years. Recently he participated in the International Eucharistic Congress in Cebu.

Fr. Bernard was born in 1948 in a village, Huningue, Alsatia, where three countries’ borders meet: France, Germany, and Switzerland. Raised by his German father and French mother, he grew up in a multicultural context where an open spirit and good ecumenical relations were common currency. “That really marked me since the post-war context was quite special.” When he was only six years old, his parish priest asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he replied, “I want to be like you,” without knowing, as he admitted, just what that meant. Later on, his only sister encouraged him to become a religious and not a diocesan priest. “Already at a young age, I became attached to the vow of poverty.” When he was 12, he entered an Assumptionist minor seminary.

“The Lord asked me to be at the service of the Church in the strictest sense of the term.”

His novitiate took place in a very international context. “I was only 18 and it was exciting to be in the midst of all these cultures! It was a time of true conversion to Jesus Christ, the discovery of the God made man.” To his great joy, the Second Vatican Council marked the rediscovery of the original charism of his congregation rooted in the spirit of St. Augustine. After completing his studies of philosophy and theology, he decided that he didn’t want to be a ‘perpetual student,’ so he looked for a ‘little’ job and was hired as the diocesan secretary of the Comité Catholique Contre la Faim et pour le Développement/CCFD (Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development) in Strasbourg: “It was an incredible opportunity to get to know the Third World.” Ten years later, Brother Bernard became the national secretary general of the CCFD until 1992. In two books that he penned he recounts his involvement in international charitable work and how it profoundly marked his life. In 1993, he was named assistant general of his congregation and was off to Rome for two terms of six years each. It was the first time that someone who was not a priest was elected to this position. It was during this time that he received a second call, one to the priesthood: “The Lord was calling me to be at the service of the Church in the strictest sense of the term.” Ordained in 1997, he undertook the beatification cause of three Bulgarian Assumptionist priests assassinated in 1952 during the Communist regime. He said that while in Rome he had the good fortune of meeting Pope John Paul II several times.

Government soldiers reportedly responsible for killing

An article on the website of Boston University where Fr. Machozi did his studies
03.23.2016 By Art Jahnke

Rev. Vincent Machozi (STH’15), an Assumptionist priest, was gunned down Sunday night in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by a dozen armed men, reportedly members of the country’s army. Photo courtesy of Augustinians of the Assumption North American Province

Rev. Vincent Machozi (STH’15), a Catholic priest of the religious order Augustinians of the Assumption (Assumptionists), who for several years documented human rights abuses in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was murdered Sunday night by armed gunmen, shortly after he posted an online article denouncing the involvement of the Congolese and Rwandan presidents in the massacres of innocent civilians.

A native of eastern Congo and a School of Theology student from 2006 to 2012, Machozi worked closely with the BU Pardee School of Global Studies African Studies Center on outreach efforts in the war-torn country.

2016-03-21 - R.D. Congo

La Croix, Paris

Founder of an informational website documenting the ongoing violence on North Kivu Province, Fr. Vincent Machozi was murdered in the early hours of Monday, March 21, shortly after he had posted an article denouncing the presidents of the DRC and Rwanda in recent massacres affecting the region.

Fr. Vincent Machozi defended the Yira ethnic group (also known as Nande), who have been victims of the massive and illegal exploitation of coltan in the eastern Congo Could it have been the army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that murdered Assumptionist priest Vincent Machozi in the early hours this morning, March 21, while he was sleeping at his mother's home some 10 miles from the city of Butembo?

« Soldiers arrived in a vehicle a little after midnight, broke down the door, and shot him on site », according to Very Rev. Emmanuel Kahindo, vicar general of the Assumptionist congregation stationed in Rome, himself a Congolese and from the same tribe as Fr. Machozi.

Fr. Vincent Machozi (1965-2016)

Fr. Vincent Machozi was murdered this morning (March 21^st) in the Congo.

More information:

Un assomptionniste congolais assassiné en RD-Congo
La Croix, le 21/03/2016

RDC: Assassinat du Père assomptionniste Vincent MACHOZI le GADHOP exige une information judiciaire contre les autorités sécuritaires de la zone du crime
GADHOP, Mars 21, 2016

Congolese Assumptionist priest murdered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
2016-03-21 - R.D. Congo
La Croix, Paris

Founder of an informational website documenting the ongoing violence on North Kivu Province, Fr. Vincent Machozi was murdered in the early hours of Monday, March 21, shortly after he had posted an article denouncing the presidents of the DRC and Rwanda in recent massacres affecting the region.

Fr. Vincent Machozi defended the Yira ethnic group (also known as Nande), who have been victims of the massive and illegal exploitation of coltan in the eastern Congo Could it have been the army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that murdered Assumptionist priest Vincent Machozi in the early hours this morning, March 21, while he was sleeping at his mother's home some 10 miles from the city of Butembo?

« Soldiers arrived in a vehicle a little after midnight, broke down the door, and shot him on site », according to Very Rev. Emmanuel Kahindo, vicar general of the Assumptionist congregation stationed in Rome, himself a Congolese and from the same tribe as Fr. Machozi.

« Over the past two years he has been threatened and three times barely escaped being killed », added Fr. Kahindo who recalled  a conversation they had last October in which he said : « Pray for me because I will be murdered… »

Fr. Jean Claude de Rosny, a French Assumptionist, has finally hung up his walking boots after 55 years of serving the Church and the Assumption faithfully and energetically in his adopted homeland of Madagascar. Recently ordained, at age 28, he disembarked at the port of Tuléar (Toliara), seven years after the Assumptionists arrived on the “big island” to assume responsibility for the newly created diocese and only a few months after the country’s independence was declared on June 26, 1960.

Having spent a few months immersed in learning the local language, Malagasy, he was assigned as an assistant at the cathedral parish. Not long thereafter, he took up numerous posts in the many outstations of the diocese only to be named vicar general of the diocese and the regional superior of the Assumptionists. But his love was in the missions of the bush country where he returned after his administrative service. However, it wasn’t long before the Congregation and the Church asked him to return to Toliara to become director of the school for catechists and pastor of the French-speaking parish in the city.