Catholic Religious in India have been organizing a series of training programs to help improve their people’s leadership qualities and manage conflicts and violence.

“The time has come for our leaders to get better equipped to manage conflicts because every other day we have sectarian violence in the country,” said Montfort Brother Mani Mekkunnel, national secretary of Conference of Religious India (CRI).

The conference is the national association of India’s 822 major superiors of 334 Religious congregations.

Some 450 Religious have attended CRI training programs over the past three years. Each program, entitled “Call to leadership,” runs for five days.

The latest training program was held Oct 20-25 in New Delhi where 22 people attended. The program proposes that Religious could lead villages and communities to start interreligious dialogues through programs involving all religions.

“What we want today are action leaders, not mute spectators,” Brother Mekkunnel told UCA News. The Religious, he added, should take leadership in finding solutions to problems such as sectarianism and violence.

Brother Mekkunnel said growing religious fanaticism demanded not “good school principals, good doctors or nurses” from the Religious, but “good leaders.”

He said the Church had “many educated and qualified people” but in times of need, “we miserably failed to deliver.”

He cited the example of last year’s anti-Christian violence in Orissa, where some 90 Christians were killed and 50,000 displaced. “We had no one to guide or to defend us even,” he said.

Sacred Heart of Jesus Brother R. Amaldas, who attended the latest program, told UCA News it gave him “an insight into modern religious spirituality.”

He said the training convinced him that “spiritual growth” also means not leaving people in their misery. “We have to be with them in their happiness and sadness. We have to even adopt their way of praying,” he added.

The training program offers an opportunity to discuses the present scenario, exchange ideas or borrow ideas, Brother Amaldas said.

Sister Lilly Kuriakose, another participant, said most often in formation houses “we go with the ready-made formula.” Instead of giving the new candidates “freedom to express themselves, we push them with what we have.”

The Saint Charles Borromeo nun said the program stressed the need to let people explore.

What Sister Kuriakose liked most was classes on legal matters that gave her more knowledge about human rights. “At least now I know where and who to contact in case of rights violation,” she added.

Brother Mekkunnel says the program has increased the participants’ confidence and made them enthusiastic to solve the problems they face in their field of work.

Source:  UCAN

Related posts:

1. Young Religious asked to learn from saints
2. Intensify struggle for justice: Religious told
3. Indian Religious focus on next generation leaders
4. Religious learn peace building in West Bengal
5. Northeast young Religious brace up for 2020