The General Chapter 2019 “decided to suspend the present structure of Provinces and Regions . . .for a period of experimentation until the 2025 General Chapter.” Further, the Chapter said “The Institute Leader and Council will make appropriate provision for the Government portion of the Constitutions to be revised in preparation for General Chapter 2025” (p.8). To fulfil that mandate, the Institute Leadership Council appointed a committee in April 2021 to work on revising the governance section our Constitutions. The members of the committee are: Cristina Caetano, Coltridah Mooya, Teresa Nogueira, and Catherine Patten (C).
In our initial meetings, a bit daunted by the task before us and guided by Sr. Brid Long, SSL, the committee articulated some basic agreements to guide our work.
- We wish to reaffirm the basic principles of governance currently in our Constitutions.
- We value the beauty and inspiration of our Constitutions and so we only want to make revisions necessary to reflect our current reality.
- We understand that the Government section of our Constitutions will be revised first.
- The entire document will be reviewed to be sure that language is consistent, and to maintain integrity of style.
Throughout, we worked very closely with Sr. Margaret Fielding and the Institute Leadership Council. We also agreed from the beginning that we would work on the text simultaneously in English and Portuguese to ensure understanding.
In February 2022 we had a week-long in-person meeting at the Generalate in Rome to work on the text. Cristina was unable to come from Brazil, but we communicated with her daily via zoom. We also had enormous help from Sr. Kelly Connors, PM, who clarified canonical questions for us.
In October 2022 we presented a revised draft to the Enlarged Leadership Council at their meeting in Sag Harbor. The Area Leaders agreed to present the text, along with the PowerPoint presentation we had prepared, to the sisters in their Areas. We also prepared a consultation sheet for the sisters to send us questions, suggestions, concerns, affirmations.
The response of the sisters was overwhelmingly positive. They expressed gratitude for the work of the committee and confidence in the process. While there were no objections to the proposed revisions, there were many desires for further clarification, especially about the new understanding of Areas. The committee received and synthesized the recommendations and concerns. After considering each one, we prepared a PowerPoint presentation for the Enlarged Leadership Council meeting in CEJG–Costa Nova, Portugal, November 2023. Once again, the area leaders agreed to use that presentation with their sisters. Sr. Kelly Connors’ presence with us in Porto was very helpful. At that time, we agreed that the work was basically complete and the text ready to be presented to the General Chapter in July 2025.
Catherine Patten
