australasia

austraLasia #2686

New Pentecost in Surabaya

SURABAYA: 4 August 2010 -- "I'm proud of you!" That about sums up the feelings and sentiments of Fr Noel Villafuerte, parish priest of St. Michael, Tanjung Perak Surabaya, during the Confirmation Mass for some 47 parishioners last Sunday. St Michael's Parish, together with Blitar, in Surabaya, East Java, is the newest Salesian presence in Indonesia. On 18 April of this year, the Bishop officially installed Fr Noel as the parish priest, and St Michael's became the second Salesian parish in Indonesia, the first being S. John Bosco in Jakarta. From the solemn Mass, presided over by Bishop Vincent Sutikno, himself a son of the 49 year old parish and a self-confessed admirer of Don Bosco since childhood, to the simple but familiar reception in the parish multi-purpose hall, the well-coordinated activities went smoothly. In spite of the interrupted catechetical preparations being given by Fr Noel, as he had to be away for some 20 days to preach the annual retreat of the confreres in the Delegation of PNG-SI, the remaining three sessions of instructions were ably handled by some of the senior parish catechists.
Worth noting was the dialogue and open forum that the committee organized especially for the Bishop and the confirmands. Talk-shows in the celebrity world are the in-thing nowadays, and it was just creative of the organizers to provide this forum for the newly confirmed parishioners to ask the Bishop about "anything under the sun!", so from such topics as the practical meaning of being prophet, priest and king to even curious queries like the difference between our confirmation and the baptism of the Holy Spirit of the charismatics, the talk-show - aptly titled, An Hour With Our Bishop - indeed made the day.