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This issue of #Assumpta marks the tenth edition of this project, which began with the first meeting we had, the communication team with the commission leaders, [Education, JPICS and BGSD, Youth and Vocation, Archives and Finance] and the General Council. We were just starting the 2019-2020 academic year in Auteuil to look together at how to respond to the General Chapter’s call to “put communication at the service of communion and mission”.
At this first meeting of the mission fields, we did not yet have a clear vision of how each commission operated at a general, continental, provincial-regional and local levels.For instance, our Communication team did not plan to re-launch paper publications, except for books containing, for example, the circulars of successive General Superiors, in link with the Archives.
But we felt that a light, colourful publication, in three languages, would make it possible to give visibility to the experiences of living and extending the Kingdom in the various places where the Congregation embodies the charism. Throughout these ten issues of #Assumpta, coordinated by the people in charge of the mission fields, lay people and sisters have shared experiences, resources, intuitions... which they are carrying out with creative fidelity, in continuity with the dream of Saint Marie Eugénie “to make the earth a place of glory for God”.The content - text and photos - of #Assumpta brings our magazine to life. None of this would have been possible without you, both authors and translators. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Together, we also baptised this project with a name that unites the old and the new: “Assumpta”, our Marian mystery in Latin, which avoided having to choose between one of the three modern languages of the congregation, and the hashtag “#” which, in digital vocabulary, makes it easy to find us on social networks.
We began by publishing three issues a year on symbolic dates for our Congregation: 30th April (anniversary of the Foundation), 28th August (feast of Saint Augustine) and 25th December (Christmas, anniversary of the profession of the first sisters).
Around two years after the launch of the first issue, given the difficulty in finding sisters or lay people to write articles, the Plenary General Council meeting in Madrid in March 2022, took the decision to reduce publications to two issues a year, on 25th December and 30th April.
We would also like to thank the provincials for the support they have given to the communication teams and the launch of a communication plan in their province.The International Communication Session held in Auteuil in May 2023 was an opportunity to celebrate the network that continues to unfold at the Assumption.We are weaving a network of communion that is at the same time an instrument for announcing the Good News of the Kingdom of God into which small and big fish can enter (cf. Mt 13:47).
We are gradually entering into the communication culture. We know we are invited to do more by inviting greater number of our partners to express themselves. By doing so, we will strengthen our collaboration and bonds of communion.
Whether we are writing, translating, revising, editing or laying out each issue of #Assumpta, we are not professionals. Yet, we are committed to a family spirit. Many of you have contributed to this project, which you have welcomed with gratitude and joy. Many thanks for everyone’s commitment.
We are pleased to be celebrating the tenth anniversary of this project at a time when the Church is in the midst of a Synod and the Congregation is preparing for the 2024 General Chapter. Let’s continue to put communication at the service of communion and mission.
ALMUDENA DE LA TORRE, ISABELLE ROUX, LINDA PLANT AND MERCEDES MÉNDEZTechnical team for #AssumptaOriginal Spanish