Rome. “I will make you prophet of the peoples.”
Like every year, our Institute of Theology of the Consecrated Life “Claretianum” of Rome celebrated one Week of Consecrated Life from December 11 to 14, 2007. This was the 33rd week. The theme was a response to a need to revitalize the prophetic sense of so many consecrated men and women. Enzo Bianchi, founder and prior of the monastic community of Bose, opened the Week with a series of intuitions and responses to this question: “What prophecy does consecrated life offer to our time?” On her turn, Bruna Costacurta, professor of exegesis at the Gregorian university of Rome, commented on the text of Jeremiah 1,5 and prophetism in the Bible. The following day, the professors Vincenzo Battaglia (dean of the faculty of Theology of the Antonianum) and José Cristo Rey García Paredes (presently director of our Institute of religious life in Madrid) offered a Christological and ecclesiological reading of the prophecy incarnate in Christ, the definitive prophet of the Father, and the sense of the response in the Church. This conference of Cristo Rey (Prophecy and response in the Church) aroused much applause. The following day, Santiago María González Silva presented the founders as original prophecy of consecrated life; and Sister Nicla Spezzati projected some “prophetic” figures of the XX century (Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Dalai Lama, Desmon Tutu, Teresa of Calcuta, Giovanni Paolo II, etc.).

And on the last day, the Carmelite Bruno Secondin, presented some operative lines to reinvent the prophetic ferment in the Church through the renewed consecrated life. Our Father General also had a very interesting communication on the new prophetic experiences in some Congregations. A round table closed the Week with present “prophetic” voices like those of our Angelo Cupini, the Jesuit Bartolomeo Sorge, a Franciscan Sister of the poor and the message of a contemplative monastery of the St. Clare Sisters of Orvieto.

During the week there were some visits in representation of the various organisms of consecrated life in the persons of Mons. Agostino Gardin (CIVCSVA), Pietro Trabuco (Union of Superiors General), Teresa Simionato (Union of Major Superior Sisters of Italy), Enrica Rosanna (undersecretary of the CIVCSVA).