Link

Edition February 2001

Congress of the Catholic Laity

Olivier Heyen participated in the Congress of the Catholic Laity, an initiative of the Pontifical Council for Laity (CPPL) that took place from 25 through 30 November 2000 in Rome. The congress emphasised the importance and the role of the lay people in the Catholic Church and tried to establish the basis of the mission of the lay people in the next millennium. The meeting was also a good opportunity for deeper contacts with lay people from all over the world.

"At the end of this jubilee year (from 25 to 30 November), the Congress of the Catholic Laity took place in Rome, organised by the Pontifical Council for the Laity., With the help of the conciliar texts, the encyclicals and the papal exhortations, this congress reaffirmed the importance and the role of the laity in the Church. This congress also tempted to build the bases of the laity's mission during the next millennium.
The lay people whose task is not the liturgy have more freedom to transmit Christ's message in the world. The laity must be present and engaged in the world.

Next to traditional movements like Fimcap, there were also quite a few new ecclesiastical movements which try to meet the spiritual needs of some of our brothers and sisters. They are quite different in their structure, their working methods and their realities, compared to traditional movements. This congress enabled me to get to know them better, to discover their richness and their weakness, but also to discover ours.
The most important message for me is that Fimcap really has its place in the Catholic Laity, because as any other community, Fimcap's richness consists in the diversity of the composition (organisations, movements, individuals..). Without this diversity in the Catholic Laity, part of the believers, and especially the young people would feel left alone and would not feel at home in the Church."

Olivier Heyen

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Letters to the editor

Dear friends,

As a reaction to the Jubilee issue of our newsletter Link we have received letters of congratulations and positive reactions from organisations and friends from all over the world, such as Haiti, South Africa, Burundi, India, Austria and Belgium. The Jubilee edition also led to new contacts with organisations outside of Fimcap who would like co-operating with Fimcap after having read the last Link issue.

Thank you very much! These expressions of sympathy are an encouragement for the team responsible for LINK, mainly volunteers who write the articles and the translations in their free time. Members of the team are Annette Leimer (former General Secretary 1986-1998) for English translations; Marleen Deblonde (former Fimcap Vice president and President 1986-1995) for French translations and co-editor; Carme Carrion i Ribas (Fimcap European General Secretary) and Sofie and Sarah Mertens (Chiro International work group) for Spanish translations, as well as Bert van den Bossche (former European Vice-president) for various contributions. Not to forget Zeger van Besien (Fimcap General Secretary), co-ordination; Jan Van Bostraete, layout; and the staff of the Chiro office, mailing. Responsible editors are Johan Cottyn and Marleen Deblonde.

We hope to further meet your expectations and to find some new collaborators as writers or translators. Thank you again and many greetings.

Johan Cottyn and Marleen Deblonde.

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Jef van den Audenaerde

4 decades at the service of national and international youth

Jef van den Audenaerde was the administrative director of Chiro Flanders for 37 years and Fimcap Secretary General for 20 years. His well deserved retirement has started in January 2001.
Jef was sometimes nick-named "Mister Fimcap" and was one of the leading figures in the founding of Fimcap which was recognised by the Holy See during an official ceremony in the Basilisk Maxenicus in Rome in 1962. During all his years in Fimcap, Jef has influenced many people by his commitment, enthusiasm, creativity, and his convincing personality. First he was delegate of Chiro, then became Secretary General of Fimcap in 1968 with the help of Rien Glerum (NL) and Chris Peters(†) as president. Jef was Secretary until 1992 and performed his task with an unmatched enthusiasm and a remarkable professional feeling. As the workload gradually increased, he shared the task from 1986 to 1992 with Annette Leimer Bakkers (CH) who was elected co-secretary in 1986. However, Jef didn't abandon Fimcap after 1992. He remained interested in the projects and activities and was in charge of financial matters until 1995. Jef had a great support in his family, who sometimes accompanied him to longer meetings or assemblies. His family also often hosted Fimcap people from the Third World, before and after Fimcap meetings.
Jef was often the spirit and driving energy of many Fimcap activities that remain engraved in the memories of many Fimcap members. I would like to mention just one such activity as example, an activity that has entered the annals of Fimcap: the International Children's Camp in Bergharen (NL) in 1979 with 700 children and animators. The theme was Under the Rainbow, or Noah's Arc. Jef was also fervent in the opening of Fimcap to the Third World recognising the importance of supporting youth movements coming first in Africa, then in South America and Asia.

On international youth work Jef said: "The international dimension in the youth organisations is very important. During the past years international exchange activities, partnerships and solidarity have increased, bringing new elements that we had lost in the preceding years . There are few people who realise that Jesus Christ has delivered a revolutionary message, one that will always and everywhere be up to date."

In the name of everybody who has met and worked with Jef during his commitment in and for Fimcap I would like to say thank you. Thank you; Jef, for the example you have been to all of us and for the time and energy you have given to Fimcap.

Marleen Deblonde

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Presentation of some Fimcap officials and co-operators

Olivier Heyen, Fimcap President since 1995 From Fédération des Patros Belgium Email: olivier.heyen@skynet.be Zeger van Besien Fimcap General Secretary since 1998 From Chirojeugd Flanders Chiro officer Belgium Email: ZegerVanB@chiro.be Sebastiaan Van Dijk Fimcap European Vice-president since 1999 From NUK Norway Email: sebgmc@zonnet.nl Judy Figland President of the Afro-conference since 1996 Fimcap Vice-president From Chiro Southern Africa South Africa Email: familylife@yebo.co.za Victor Quaye-Foli Regional Secretary of the Afroconference for West Africa From CYO Ghana Nsawam, Ghana Marleen Deblonde Editorship and translation of LINK Co-operator of the Fimcap Secretariat Austria Email: m.nitsche@xpoint.at Sofie Mertens Chirojeugd Flanders Translation of the Spanish LINK issue Belgium Bert Van den Bossche Chirojeugd Flanders Fimcap co-operator for Fimcap promotion Belgium

Johan Cottyn International Fimcap Chaplain since 1992 Co-editor of LINK Belgium Email: johancottyn@village.uunet.be Kurt Van Der Herten Fimcap European President since 1999 Fimcap Vice-president From Chirojeugd Flanders Belgium Email: kurt.vanderherten@yucom.be Carme Carrion i Ribas Fimcap European General Secretary since 1999 Translator of the Spanish issue of Link From CCCCCE, Barcelona, Spain Email: carmec@bsab.com Zénon Manirakiza Vice-president of the Afroconference since 1999 From Chiro Burundi Bujumbura, Burundi Email: crid@cbinf.com Mary Diergaardt Regional Secretary of the Afro-conference for southern Africa. From Nacayul Windhoek, Namibia Annette Leimer-Bakkers Translation of the English LINK issue Switzerland Email: a.leimer@bluewin.ch Sarah Mertens Chirojeugd Flanders Translation of the Spanish Link issue Belgium

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News from Haiti

Port au Prince, February 9^th, 2001

Dear friends,

After reading the beautiful issue of Link Jubilee 2000 with so many contributions and news from the various organisations we have decided to write some lines about Kiro Haiti for the next Fimcap newsletter.

As you might know, Kiro Haiti was founded in 1960 and wanted to celebrate its 40th anniversary in November 2000, on the day of Christ the King. However, we had to postpone the celebration because of the presidential elections. The Kiro Movement is present in all nine dioceses. We had to cope with many difficulties during the period of the coup d'état (91-94). After that period the movement successfully started again and is still growing.
We now have 585 local groups with about 50.000 members.

With the young people we want to work on the reconstruction of our country after the years of the Duvalier dictatorship and coup d'état. We would like to build a democratic country, but the democratic culture, mentality and tradition is missing, I even dare say it is unknown. Via games, songs, discussions and youth work we try to help creating a new mentality of honesty, justice, truth, dialogue, tolerance, co-responsibility, solidarity and concern for the welfare of all. In this sense we have chosen the new year theme: "Ayisyen Konsekan ... Se lespwa Ayiti" (a reliable Haitian is Haiti's hope).

In 2004, Haiti will celebrate the 200th anniversary of independence. Two hundred years of bloody fights, bloodthirsty dictators and numerous crimes. Two hundred years of independence... and the Haitian people were never the protagonists of their own history. Haiti, the first black republic, is still the victim of interfering foreign countries, the so-called befriended countries.

In Kiro, we want to prepare this historical day by focussing on the national pride of our young people, together with their sense of duty: responsibility and commitment: We are Haiti!

We are sorry that we cannot take part in Fimcap activities on a more regular basis (General Assemblies, World Camp, etc.) This is not only due to financial obstacles, but also because we have to cope with most humiliating and rarely successful procedures for obtaining the necessary visa.

Many greetings,
Jacques Etzer Neptune
Responsible for international matters

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European Bureau Meeting - Barcelona

The last meeting of the European Bureau in December was hosted in Barcelona by Coordinació Catalana (CCCCCE). The temperature was colder than you would expect in these southern cities, but the atmosphere was -as usual- very warm.

We started on Saturday morning with the news from the organisations. In fact, it was not our aim to discuss this topic for a long time; however, a lot of member organisations wanted to share their worries about the present financial situation of their organisation and especially concerning the international work. At the end of the morning session, the general feeling was rather "down". I didn't like it at all and I realised that we had to change direction in order to end the BM with a positive feeling. But how?

After a nice lunch, this positive feeling came automatically back. We discussed the work in the working groups and discovered that a lot of people had been doing nice jobs in between the meetings. This gave us all positive energy! When we discussed the topics on Roundabout and the new leaders for Roundabout, the financial aspects brought us again back to the working group on finances. We discussed together on the funding possibilities by the new European Youth Action Program and decided that it would be very interesting to examine this more profoundly. As a matter a fact, we became very enthusiastic about the whole thing; we even came to the conclusion that a seminar on the Roundabout topic could be organised, with European subventions that would be partly used for travel reimbursement. At the same time, we solved the problem of money (more or less) and had a nice perspective for future work!

After the session on the working groups, we exchanged our knowledge and experience about magazines articles. In little groups - depending on the size and number of editions - we discussed about several aspects of publishing and more particularly, on using our magazines for the promotion of international affairs. Also this part of the BM turned out to be success, due to the input of the delegates.

After the celebration during which we made a puzzle as symbol of our community, we ended the day with an alternative guided tour in the old part of the town and tasted the Spanish beer of course.

On Sunday morning, we had to deal with the remaining points on the agenda: Euroforum, Eurocontact, General Assembly and so on. It was very intense but we could end on time for lunch. After lunch everybody went back home, I guess all were tired but satisfied. I was already thinking of next BM: being host, organising a seminar, the work to be done,. Tired but definitely satisfied about the new turn!!!

Kurt Van der Herten

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Ranfttreffen

50 years Advent's March in Switzerland organised by Blauring and Jungwacht

The Ranfttreffen in Flüeli-Ranft near Lucerne, December 2000

The Ranft is a narrow valley in the centre of Switzerland. More that 2500 youths gathered in that region for a march in the night, in silence, carrying torches in a snowy landscape and meeting in little old churches to prepare for Christmas. 14 Chiro members were also part of the event. The Ranfttreffen is an intense group moment with pauses to get to know each other better and exchange about faith and its meaning for life. The topics discussed were around perspectives for tomorrow, the walls surrounding us that we should pull down. Eucharist was celebrated in the open and in three languages (German, Italian and French) and brought questions and hopes of the participants together. The youth bishop Monseigneur Theurillat invited the youths to be courageous witnesses in everyday life and to be light for the others. At the end of the march the participants had the possibility of relaxing in various activities: Folk dances, African songs, storytelling, indoor climbing, handicrafts and talking to Mgr Theurillat who was very impressed by the event.

The youths spent the night in vigil and went home full of strong experiences - the night, the march with the torches, new friends, community.

Erik Desmet (Excerpt from an article in "Kerk en Leven", January 2001)

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Human Rights Education

The Human Rights Education Youth Programme will organise some interesting conferences on several topics concerning Human Rights in 2001 and 2002. If you are interested, contact the Council of Europe, secretariat@eycb.hu or look at the web-pages http://www.coe.int/T/E/Cultural_Co-operation/Youth/ or http://www.eycb.hu.

Seminars

• May 2001, Budapest, Violence and traffic of women
• October 2001, Budapest, Youth against violence
• March 2002, Budapest, Training of trainers

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European Fellowship

'Firm Foundations 2001' - 22-30 May 2001

The European Fellowship invites youth leaders between 16 and 25 years old to the event "Firm Foundations 2001" which will take place at the Boys Brigade Training Centre of Felden Lodge, Hemel Hempstead, England. It is the annual Christian music and arts festival of the BB, and regularly involves up to 1000 young people.
Besides the workshops, there are visits to places of interest and you'll see some of England's heritage. The event is organised in an ecumenical way.

Costs are £40 (US $60), including food, lodging and travel in England once the event has started. Travel costs are completely reimbursed, but you have to travel by train. Financial help for visas may also be available.

Applications should be sent urgently. For more details please contact Eric Hudson, phone +44 1535 690717 or by e-mail: eric.hudson@boys-brigade.org.uk.

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