Leaders from each of the SVD communities within the Australian Province, together with the Provincial Council, gathered in Sydney this week for a Leadership Workshop designed to identify how to put into practice the congregation’s priorities for the next six years.

At its General Chapter meeting in 2012, the SVD AUS Province identified five key priorities or congregational directions for its mission activity. These were Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue; Primary and New Evangelisation; Indigenous and Ethnic Communities; Migration; and Social Justice and Poverty Eradication.

The Leadership Workshop, which was facilitated by Fr Michael Mullins SM, invited all the provincial and community leaders to consider how they could move forward in implementing these priorities in their own local situation.

Fr Michael said the Workshop was an opportunity for the confreres to take time out to reflect together.

“This reflection helps people to do some thinking in a collegial way,” he said.

One of the suggestions he raised was for the community and provincial leaders to “create a script” for their activity. He proposed six questions to help formulate that script. They were: What do you want to do? What steps are you going to propose to do it? Who’ll do it? What resources do you have? How long do you expect to take? Who should know what in terms of information sharing?

Provincial, Fr Henry Adler SVD, told the meeting that the entire Province needed to get used to “owning” their Province priorities.

“As leaders, we will get to own them more and more as work through them,” he said.

“So, in your communities you might still have your own local priorities, but we need to be aware that these are the Province Priorities and we are all working towards them together.”

Fr Michael said that to achieve this, information sharing and collaboration were crucial.

“Do you want to live and act in silos, or act collaboratively?” he asked.

Responding to that point, Fr Albano Da Costa SVD who works in parish ministry in Wellington, New Zealand, acknowledged that even though local situations varied greatly in the AUS Province, there was much to be gained from working together.

“It’s all about sharing ideas from District to District and supporting one another,” he said.

On the second day of the Workshop, Fr Henry addressed the leaders present on practical matters relating to the Province, especially Professional Standards and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“We spent some time addressing the very important issue of Professional Standards in the Church and the Province, both today and into the future,” Fr Henry said.

Speaking after the Workshop, a number of the confreres said the time spent together had helped to provide direction and had highlighted areas where the Province could be working more effectively towards its priorities.

An action plan will now be formulated to chart a practical path forward in addressing the Province priorities.