HONG KONG (SE): A Redemptoris Mater College for Evangelisation in Asia was established in Macau by the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples on June 29, Agenzia Fides, reported.
 
The decree of establishment was signed by Fernando Cardinal Filoni, prefect of the congregation and the college entrusted to the Neocatechumenal Way. It is slated to open its doors to students from different nations in September.
 
The initiative is in response to the call of Pope St. John Paul II who, in his encyclical, Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of the Redeemer), indicated the Asian continent as a territorial area, “which the Church’s mission ad gentes (to the gentiles) ought to be chiefly directed” (n.37), and to the desire of Pope Francis who, in his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel), invites the Church to “go forth” to always proclaim the gospel.
 
According to its statues, the college depends on the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, but will maintain contact with the local bishop and may have separate sections in other places or countries. It is in fact a “major seminary of the Church, an educational community that enjoys a canonical juridical personality and will have to obtain juridical personality according to the laws of the country” in which it is established.
 
Agenzia Fides reported that the college aims to prepare future priests for evangelisation in Asia, accompanying them “in the life of prayer and the theological and cardinal virtues, with a serious commitment to philosophical and theological studies and to an action of itinerant evangelisation.” 
 
Priests formed in the institute “may be sent, according to the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, to the requesting dioceses,” in different Asian territories and nations, according to the pastoral needs of those who request them. “In this mission of evangelisation - it is emphasized - presbyters can be assisted by entire families, formed in the Neocatechumenal Way, willing to be also sent.”
 
Cardinal Filoni explained that the new Redemptoris Mater College for Evangelisation in Asia is “the fruit of apostolic creativity that looks to evangelisation in that continent and expresses a will of decentralisation of the congregation.”
 
He said, “Macau has historically represented the door or a bridge for the mission of the Church in the East…Its importance as a centre for evangelization in the Far East is well known. Extraordinary missionaries like Matteo Ricci, Alessandro Valignano, Francesco Saverio and many other evangelisers passed through this door for the mission in Asia.”