SEVERAL MEMBERS OF CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS INSTITUTES, who served as NGO representatives to the United Nations, began a reflection on consecrated life. They soon invited a few other key individuals to join their reflection. The results, presented in this book, are prophetic and searching essays by five visionary women and five visionary men whose roots and experience spread into Africa, the Americas, and Europe. These ten authors undertook their prophetic and searching reflections in light of the fiftieth anniversary of two key documents from the Second Vatican Council. Those documents are Perfectae Caritatis, the Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life, and Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. The authors did so in response to a global invitation by Pope Francis for institutes of consecrated life to use the anniversaries as a reflective occasion to look to the future. Since the Second Vatican Council, members of religious institutes across the Catholic Church have been tapping back into the prophet visions of their foundresses and founders, and seeking to renew their communities for future prophetic service. Paradoxically, in the Global North that renewal has been accompanied by decline in numbers, while in the Global South there has been an explosion of numbers, and especially in Africa. Everyone interested in the global future of religious life will gain from reading this book. Its prophetic and searching essays will inspire all who read them. - Joe Holland, Ph.D., President, Pax Romana / Catholic Movement for Intellectual & Cultural Affairs USA, Washington DC EMEKA XRIS OBIEZU & JOHN PAUL SZURA, co-editors of this book, are both priests in the Order of Saint Augustine, and both have lengthy experience experience at the United Nations, as well as in scholarly and pastoral work.
