Mozambique: Celebrating the Orionine Jubilee Year during a pandemic.

The Sons of Divine Providence (FDP), sometimes known as the Orionine Fathers, are working around Covid-19 restrictions, in Mozambique, to find ways of fulfilling events and activities planned for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Don Orione, an Italian saint and founder of the Congregation.

Rogério Maduca, Rádio Pax, Beira – Mozambique and Vatican News English Africa Service.

The Orionine Jubilee Year, centred on promoting vocations, was inaugurated in June this year at the Obra Dom Orione in Maputo, the country’s capital. The jubilee year festivities end in June 2022.

Vocations promotion and animation

Father Wend Polycarpe, Rector of the Propaedeutic Seminary of Our Lady of Guard, explained the jubilee year plans to Vatican News partner, Radio Pax of Beira. Father Polycarpe, who is also the Congregations’ Director of Vocations in Mozambique, said the focus of the Orionine jubilee is to encourage and revive vocations. He said almost all activities or commitments during the jubilee year would aim at vocational animation and promotion.

Mozambique's Covid-19 challenge

However, the Orionine Vocations Director, Father Polycarpe, conceded that the Congregation was working around the third wave Covid-19 pandemic as they implement planned activities. Several events have been hampered by national restrictions imposed by the authorities battling the pandemic.

The Congregation has 13 of its members in Mozambique. They are mainly working in the Mozambican provinces of Gaza and Maputo, the country’s southern regions.

On Sunday, 15 August 2021, the Mozambican Province witnessed the professions of perpetual vows for its first indigenous Mozambican members.

Don Orione: Little Work of Divine Providence

Don Luigi Orione was born in Pontecurone, Diocese of Tortona, Italy, on 23 June 1872. On 13 April 1895, Luigi Orione was ordained priest.

Around Don Orione grew a group of seminarians and priests who would make up the first core group of the Little Work of Divine Providence.

On 29 June 1915, twenty years after the foundation of the Sons of Divine Providence, Don Orione added to the “single tree of many branches” the Congregation of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity. More recently, the Don Orione Secular Institute and the Don Orione Lay People’s Movement have come into being. They are equally inspired by the same founding charism of Don Orione.

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