Minister General of the Franciscan Order visited Austria
The Minister General of Franciscan Order, Father Massimo Fusarelli, is visiting Austria these days. In Hall in Tirol, Salzburg, Graz and Vienna, the head of the worldwide Franciscan order meets with the local Franciscans, employees and friends of the order’s province. The Franciscan province of St. Leopold in Austria and South Tyrol includes 18 branches, in which a total of 107 confreres live, as the order announced in a broadcast on Thursday. According to figures published on Wednesday, there are currently 12,127 Franciscans in 119 countries worldwide, of which 3,136 live in Western and 2,209 in Eastern Europe.
On Wednesday Father Fusarelli met the Austrian provincial leadership in Salzburg. “We are facing major upheavals,” said the Minister General, with a view to the changing numbers of religious vocations. Some religious provinces – primarily in Europe and North America – experienced a sharp decline in entries, others – for example in Asia or Africa – a rapid and demanding increase: “Both also bring difficulties. But we should see this development as an opportunity to change our habits to reconsider,” says Fusarelli.
Massimo Fusarelli (59) was born in Rome. He was elected Minister General of the Order in July 2021, making him the 121st successor to Saint Francis of Assisi. In Salzburg, he referred, among other things, to recent efforts to improve balance between priests, lay brothers and lay people: “The question is not how we can work together better. The question is how we can live together better and what models we can find to live this togetherness in our monasteries,” he told the confreres.
A Franciscan is urged to understand his religious life as a “history of salvation”: a history of salvation as a church with the faithful, but also a personal history of salvation: “Saint Francis finds the phrase ‘The Lord has given me’ dozens of times in his will. Every Franciscan can find moments in his life, both good and difficult, that he considers a gift from the Lord,” explains Fr. Fusarelli.
The head of the Austrian province (provincial minister), Fr. Fritz Wenigwieser, was confident about the visit of the superior: “The invitation from the general minister to open up is an encouraging task: we need new models of living together,” he said on Wednesday in Salzburg. This is especially true for the poor and needy. In Salzburg, the brothers have been helping those in need for years. Against this background, Minister General Fusarelli recalled a principle of the holy Franciscan theologian in Salzburg Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274), according to which the friars “should not live for the poor, but with the poor”.
Fusarelli had already visited the monastery in Hall in Tirol and the Franciscan high school located there on Tuesday. During a discussion with schoolchildren, he told the young people that the meaning of life cannot be found “if you only look inside yourself. The meaning of life is realized in encounters and in relationships with people people, especially to the poor.”
P. Fusarelli will be accompanied on his tour of Austria by P. Wenigwieser and P. Albert Schmucki, Definitor General responsible for Central Europe.
Source: catpress