East Asian Pastoral Institute celebrates 60 years of ongoing formation

The President of the Episcopal Conference of the Pacific, Archbishop Ryan Jimenez, presides over the Mass to commemorate sixty years since the founding of the East Asian Pastoral Institute, which has been committed to offering ongoing formation for priests, religious men and women, and laity engaged in pastoral ministry.

The East Asian Pastoral Institute (EAPI) marked the year-long celebration of its sixty-year anniversary on Sunday with a Eucharistic Celebration for the community, presided over by Archbishop Ryan P. Jimenez, the President of the Episcopal Conference of the Pacific and Archbishop of Guam.

In his homily, Archbishop Jimenez commended their work to provide meaningful and faith-filled formation in a synodal Church.

He highlighted paragraph 143 of the Final Document of the Synod on Synodality that “formation provided by the Christian community be integral, ongoing and shared.”

In this context, he observed that these aspects of formation have been present at EAPI since its beginning.

At the same time, the Archbishop urged the staff and participants of the institution to first of all remain in Christ in order to be fruitful in His mission. He also exhorted them to remember the past in order to see the workings of God’s Spirit and to renew their commitment while updating the program to present needs.

Ongoing formation institute in Manila

The East Asian Pastoral Institute is an ongoing formation institute based in Manila, Philippines which provides pastoral renewal, leadership, and sabbatical programs through an in-residence experience of several months.

Founded after the Second Vatican Council in 1966 with 37 participants from 12 Asian countries, the Institute has since grown to more than 120 clergy, religious, and lay persons from over 20 countries around Asia, Oceania, Africa, and elsewhere.

Each year, parish priests, diocesan lay and clergy leaders as well as religious sisters, brothers and priests in leadership, education, pastoral ministry and other roles, come to EAPI for their sabbatical renewal, pastoral and theological updating, and leadership development formation.

Focus on holistic formation

The EAPI program is known for its focus on holistic formation.

From its beginning, EAPI has brought clergy, religious, and laity together for a shared formation experience in which they learn side-by-side with one another.  

The Institute's courses, comprising a range of spiritual, pastoral, theological, and human development modules, use a pedagogy that emphasizes not only the learning of theories but also the integration of context, experience, and practical application.

Participants also engage in regular group sharing so as to gain from mutual exchange of knowledge and experiences. What is most significant for many of the participants is the multi-cultural nature of the program. They experience and learn to interact, work, and pray with each other across a wide diversity of cultures not only in the classroom but also in community life, liturgy, and other activities. This has given everyone a strong sense of a multi-cultural church and a concrete experience of synodality long before the word became more widely known.

Formation toolkit available online

The 60th anniversary celebration saw more than 70 alumni returning to EAPI from around the world to join in the celebrations. 

For the anniversary, EAPI released a book entitled “Walking Together as a Synodal Church: A Formation Toolkit for Asian Contexts.”

The text is intended to be a user-friendly group self-study guide for synod teams, formation teams, catechists and other educators including clergy, religious, and laity.

The hope is that the text will assist them in better understanding synodality, integrating the Asian perspective, and preparing formation sessions on synodality for a variety of audiences.

The book is available for free download on the Institute's website.

Deborah Castellano Lubov
Source: vaticannews.va/en