As we have already said at the beginning this document is meant to kick off a continued reflection on the subject by every missionary and by every local community, and by every regional and provincial community. We do hope that it will be a propitious occasion that will touch off in our Institute a candid and sincere dialogue on the matters that are connected with religious poverty. This document is a necessary path to tread, and a necessary condition to reach the objective proposed to us by the XGC. The result of the reflection of each Province, if communicated to the General Direction, could afterwards be shared with the whole Institute, and it would become an ever growing power towards an ever greater inculturation of this value in the diverse contexts in which our Institute operates.
Among us, everyone knows that the theme of poverty, economy and the use of material goods for the mission is a theme that can produce, whenever it is put into practice, a lot of difficulties and misunderstandings among missionaries, especially if they come from different cultural stock. Inculturation is a powerful richness, but it must be conquered, understood, matured by all of us in a slow and gradual process. We must always remind ourselves that no culture can be considered as a defense wall in front of the demands of the radical defenses that our choice of life proposes to us. We know that every culture is called to confront itself, in the daily toil of communication with the confreres, with the fundamental nucleus that is point of reference for all, which is the Gospel and our missionary charism. Only in perfect openness and availability can we extract from the principles exposed in this document the operative choices and the attitudes that must characterize us. They must all be understood in the same mode and with the same strength, but with a sense of personal conviction.
The General Direction wants to organize, towards the end of 2003, a general meeting for Regional Administrators, in order to find the operative options that are most appropriate to the concretization of the directives that were exposed in this document. In this meeting, the members of the General Direction and the members of the General Council of Administration will be present.
We thank the Superiors of the Provinces for their precious contribution to the redaction of this letter. We want to ask them to prepare, in collaboration with all their regional offices, a program that will deepen this theme at the various levels of their own Province. The impact that this document will have on our religious family will much depend on this capillary work that they will be able to accomplish.