Page 9 - LOTN Summer Issue 50

DIOCESE

include younger and older children. She has also helped These are just a few memories that come to mind in
to arrange CGS training for catechists throughout the UK looking back at the past nine years. It says nothing of the
and Europe. countless conversations that Sr Anna Christi had with
Under the auspices of the Ogilvie Centre, Sister Anna people who sought her support and guidance.
Christi has spearheaded numerous retreats for adults at She has succeeded in planting our St Cecilia Dominican
Kilcoy Castle. These retreats have been transformative for charism in the north of Scotland; may it thrive and grow.
women and men throughout the diocese. We can be sure that she will keep us all in her prayers as
She has helped develop youth ministry in Scotland by she will be in ours.
organising retreats for youth ministers and helping to Sister Imelda Ann DuPuis
lead numerous retreats and trips for young people.

ine years ago new life was breathed into the them from teaching in the Catholic schools, but the schools’
empty buildings of Greyfriars Convent in loss was the wider Church’s gain, as they engaged in youth
NElgin. The historic mediaeval buildings, with work, in formation of Catechists of the Good Shepherd
their beautiful Franciscan church, all restored by the and many other good works. Of the original four Sisters,
munificent generosity of the 3rd Marquess of Bute, had two remain, with two having been missioned elsewhere and
for many decades housed a community of Sisters of replaced by new Sisters.
Mercy, who carried out their apostolate in teaching and To begin a new community in a strange foreign land, where
works of spiritual and corporal mercy in Elgin and in they drive on the wrong side of the road, do not always speak
daughter convents in Tomintoul, Keith and Buckie. Age in an intelligible accent and the food and weather are different,
and lack of numbers finally brought their years of service where you don’t know anybody, is a real challenge, but the
to an end. Sisters rose to it nobly. Sister Anna Christi Solis is from Texas
They were followed by a community of Dominican Sisters and led her community for nine years with the intrepidity of a
of St Cecilia, from Nashville, in Tennessee, in the United heroine in a Western facing many unexpected challenges. We
States, in their first foundation in Europe. They are a large wish her every success in her new posting, and thank her most
and flourishing Congregation, specialising in teaching and sincerely for her contribution to our local Church – haste ye
catechesis, very visible in their white habits and black veils, back!
dynamic in their youthful members, of whom the oldest was
just into her forties. Fr Giles Conacher OSB
The arcane provisions of the British visa system prevented

On the Path to Synodality - Next Steps

n October last year Pope Francis launched what was
dubbed the Synodal Path for the world-wide Church.
IA week later, Bishop Hugh in his Sunday homily
launched the synodal process for the Diocese of Aberdeen
and a small team of three set to work on a journey that is
intended to culminate in a Synod of Bishops to be held
in Rome in October 2023. But in another sense, there is
to be no culmination. There is to be no end to the process
but, instead, the hope is that there will be a new style of
being Church, journeying more consciously together in
ways both formal and informal - learning or relearning the
practice or art of communal discernment.
The start was slow. There was both enthusiasm and
hesitation, even some scepticism on the part of a few.
Facilitators were proposed, approached, and trained to
animate parish gatherings as well as non-parochial meetings,
in schools, amongst religious, and in lay societies. In the end encounters continue routinely as part of parish, deanery, and
every parish in the diocese participated, though the number diocesan life, listening to one another openly and attentively.
of participants was moderate. Most meetings took place in Submissions arising from the parish gatherings as well
person, but some online. Two such online gatherings involved as from individuals were categorised and condensed into a
ecumenical partners from the Church of Scotland, the Scottish twenty-page document which was discussed at two diocesan
Episcopal Church, Methodists and Baptists. These expressed a gatherings, in the presence of the bishop, in Inverness and
strong desire that such gatherings become a regular feature of then in Aberdeen, given the wide geographic spread of our
Christian life in North-East Scotland. diocese. And now a ten-page synthesis has been prepared and
More generally, a sense of hope and encouragement has submitted the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland. This will be
been kindled in many parishes, as well as a desire that such
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