Back in the early 1990s, twenty years ago, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, our Chancellor, had a meeting with Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte of Montreal and several others with an interest in Canadian missions.
That meeting eventually led to the establishment of Mission Chez Nous, a new society of mission support for the Province of Québec. What was unusual for the time was that none of the participants were in the same room or same place. This was a teleconference set-up— not particularly new at that time, and commonplace now, but a novelty for those involved, because of its then-advanced technology.
What advances and changes we have undergone since then!
By the turn of the 21st century, social communications were becoming an ingrained part of the work of missionary priests and sisters and bishops and lay people, and indeed, the Catholic Missions In Canada staff.
Practically every mission and missionary has access to the Internet, and thus to e-mail. Every diocese now has its website, which anyone with an Internet hook-up on the computer can go to, and find a small fount of information in seconds; for instance, visit the Diocese of Prince George at www.pgdiocese.bc.ca and see the many ways of ministry with First Nations and others, and various celebrations in the local churches. Learn there about the group associated with Rose Prince of Lejac, whose cause for sainthood is slowly growing.
Personal social communications vehicles are everywhere. A helpful tool for keeping touch, for informing, for evangelizing, and for sending out photos, is the blog. Many Canadian bishops already have a blog, and of interest to readers of Catholic Missions In Canada magazine, will be Archbishop Sylvain Lavoie’s blog, or Bishop Gary Gordon’s own blog . From Edmonton, there is Archbishop Richard Smith’s (see sidebar for links to all blogs).
Many missionaries keep in touch with one another and their friends and families through Facebook, a social tool online that enables a person to retain contact with friends and families nearby, or on another side of the earth.
For instance, among our many Facebook friends from the missions are Sister Carmen Catellier, S.N.J.M., at Cross Lake, Manitoba. Also on Facebook can be found Father Roy George Vazhaplankudiyil at the Amaranth and Alonsa missions in the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. On Facebook as well, in Conche, Newfoundland, is Father Devas Vargees.A widespread software application (an App) that lets a person communicate with others in print, voice and video is Skype. This helps a group of people to meet at the same time, and see one another onscreen and hear each other as well. We know there are many missionaries from faraway countries serving in Canada who connect with their religious superiors, their home bishops, and their families by Skype.
Skype has allowed priests from the Philippines or Sri Lanka, for example, to stay in regular touch with their families and see them and talk to them, rather than have to wait for a few years to get leave to fly out on a visit. The Skype app is also used by missionaries in different parts of a huge diocese to make plans, and even to pray together, as they see others on the monitor screens.
Who would have thought that an app would be provided for the breviary that priests and others pray every day?
A few months ago, the app could be downloaded for 99 cents, but as of this writing, it is free.
So, when a priest is on the move, travelling to one of his missions, he doesn’t need to carry the large, cumbersome book of prayer. He only needs to open the app on his iPad or Tablet or iPhone for “breviary” and the proper prayers for the day are there, in order, with no different pages to remember, no cards to move, no ribbons to attend to.
E-mail is a crucial part of our communications system now. This whole magazine you’re holding was assembled by e-mails dispatched from near and far, the photographs included. The editing was done on a computer—and so was the dedesign of the whole publication— with changes made online and with human input at every step, of course.
Speaking of human input, there are some mission tasks that are not done by extraordinary technologies.
Last year, one of our strong supporters, Yvonne Roach, a former city politician in Burlington, Ontario, used just the telephone and her own car and much one-on-one persuasion to arrange the complicated details that went into transporting over 35 large oak church pews from Waterdown, Ontario, all the way to the new mission church in Natuashish, Labrador, where Oblate Father Chris Rushton awaited them. She got them there, safe and sound, after the long trip by truck to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, via barge along the Atlantic shore to Labrador, and then by truck again.
We will always need the human touch. Whatever good means we have to facilitate the spread of the Gospel is what we will help our missionaries to employ.
