The Order’s Extraordinary Definitory began with a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit in English, at which presided Fr General. The Definitory is being celebrated in the “St Joseph Vaz” Spirituality Centre in Old Goa (India). This great Centre is now run by the Diocese, in the place where our first missionaries lived way back in 1619, exactly 400 years ago. The extraordinary Definitory will run until Sunday, the 10th of February.
Work began with a brief opening session, introduced by Fr. Johannes Gorantla. Fr. Charles Serrao – Provincial of Karnataka-Goa and President of the Indian Provincials’ Conference – and Fr. Andrew, Director of the Spiritual Center, welcomed the nearly 70 Superiors taking part in the Definitory. Fr. General was then invited to light a lamp placed in front of the presidential table, as a sign of the presence of Jesus in the midst of the assembled Definitory.
Immediately after, Fr. Saverio Cannistrà presented the general program, the coordination and method of working during the Definitory, whose objective will be the process of rereading and possible revision of our legislative “corpus” (Constitutions and Norms).
Fr Agustí Borrell, Vicar General and President of the international commission for rereading the Constitutions, then gave a conference presenting: “The rereading of the Constitutions. First stage: history and conclusions”.
The morning session ended with a second conference of a juridical nature, given by Fr Wieslaw Kiwior, on the “Revision of OCD proper law to the present time”.
In the afternoon, the work of going more deeply into the topic continued in eight geographic-linguistic groups. At the following plenary session, the secretaries of the individual groups presented in a concise manner the results of their sharing together.
Today concluded with the celebration of Vespers and prayer, in the old and beautiful church of the Spirituality Centre, which recalls an apparition of the Cross in 1619, the year of the arrival of the first Discalced Carmelite friars in India.
