The Gipsy pastoral manual of the Blessed Ceferino Institute entitled “Serve God with gladness” was published in autumn of 2019.The Institute has long been preparing to publish a book for staff engaged in gipsy pastoral activity. The project Gipsy Pastoration in the Carpathian Basin – Increasing the social sensitivity of church and civilian experts made it us possible. The project with the Szombathely diocese caritas as consortium partner organises meetings where exchange of experience and knowledge is possible. Staff members of Caritas and Archdiocese of Gyulafehérvár, Roman Catholic diocese of Munkács and Archdiocese of Košice are participants as well.
The aim of the manual “Serve God with gladness” to help both those who have just begun the service and those who have been dealing with our gipsy brothers for longer time.
We have produced a pioneering brochure which helps educators, priests, teachers and social professionals working on the field. It is about gipsy identity, culture, education, sacramental life, about how to create work places, cooperation, evangelistaion, missionary spirit and about the different ways of providing charitable assistance. We also found it important to have chapters on support for assistants. The diverse nature of gipsy pastoral work is reflected in the diversity of authors of the volume. Among others monks, priests, social professionals, teachers and pastoral workers added to the publication.
However, the main message of the book is that our task is not to alleviate instantaneous poverty, but to connect out brothers and sisters and that within the Church we should live together, both gipsy and not gipsy that: “It is he that hath made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”
BOOKLAUNCH
11 November 2019 13.30 Don Bosco College
(3700 Kazincbarcika, Építők útja 11-13.)
The volume is presented by Székely János diocesan bishop and Szabó László SchP as part of the cooperation training of the project.