From Listening with the Heart

UISG Plenary 2022: This is the message written by the Sisters Listeners during the Meeting of the Superiors General in Rome in May.

We invite you to read it and share it with your Congregation.

What we have heard, what our eyes have seen and what our hands have touched, the word made global solidarity, this is our message.

We feel honoured and moved to have been invited to take part in these days of the UISG assembly which, in continuity with the past, is creatively marking the present and passionately motivating the vision for the future of religious life, starting from its vulnerability in synodality with the universal Church. 

A simple and meaningful gesture of open arms made us listen to the music of the desire to meet, to get to know each other, to welcome each other beyond the different languages and the challenges of communication. 

Our ears rejoiced to hear the intensity of the applause with which we expressed our deep gratitude for the service of the UISG; we stood up as a sign of recognition. We have pronounced the word THANK YOU repeatedly.  Thank you: we have felt accompanied, have grown as people and as leaders, broadening our horizons. We feel at home.

We have listened to the voice of silence during the presentations, in personal reflections and in prayer. We have listened to the intensity and passion of what has been expressed and shared in the synodal dynamics of our stories, our reality, our thoughts and feelings... As Pope Francis has said: we have created a culture of encounter.

Throughout these days, a mosaic of meanings has been built around the words synodality, vulnerability and religious life, leading us to offer reflection and an invitation:

• Our vulnerability is prophetic.  We need to embrace it as a strength, to open ourselves to bold and creative Gospel living in service of vulnerable humanity, trusting in the grace we find in emptiness. This is Parrhesia.
•  We are in the process of transformation. We desire to live communion in authenticity and integral reciprocity in our life and mission, following Christ who dared to be vulnerable. We are chosen as leaders with our fragility as well as our competence and authority.  
• Walking together in synodality, we take ownership of the story, of which there is no one single version, in processes of inclusion, diversity of perspectives, contexts and cultures. This needs to be lived at the level of leadership and also of local communities and the Church.  
• We want to walk as people and communities of hospitality, giving time and space for listening, knowing when to speak and when to be silent, creating and living in daily life the spirituality of wisdom. 
• As women in the Church we desire to live our vocation as a transforming presence, giving witness to patient endurance but also to persistence and resistance. The Paschal Mystery reminds us that through the non-violent response of Jesus, God acts in surprising ways to build peace in our world.

These days have offered us invitations to:

• A new style and process of leadership that exercises authority by listening, especially to the voiceless within and beyond our communities
• A recognition of the reality of the abuse of power.  We ask for forgiveness and encourage restorative dialogue between wounded people.  We acknowledge the strength and vulnerability found in reconciliation.
• A desire to walk together as a community of belonging, with the whole people of God, equal in dignity and diverse in vocation, in a world and a planet thirsting for justice and peace in the hope of the Risen Christ.  
• A witness to a fresh and joyful religious life that is transformed and transformative.

I commit myself to live vulnerable synodality through service as a leader, animating it within the community together with the people of God. 

Sr. Lia Latela, RMI, General Councillor of the Religious of Mary Immaculate - Claretian Missionaries

Sr. Maria Cimperman, RSCJ, Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at Catholic Theological Union

Sr. Gemma Simmonds, CJ, Senior Researcher at the Margaret Beaufort Theology Institute in Cambridge

Watch photos of the UISG Assembly in Rome