Announcing logo for 400th anniversary and new international spiritual advisor

Dear Friends the National Presidents, Dear Volunteers,

We hope you are all well and enjoying this time of year, for some of you it’s summer, for others winter.  Any environment can be an opportunity to share, whatever the weather.

In this letter we would like announce two important pieces of news.

CHANGE OF SPIRITUAL ADVISOR

 First of all we would like to inform you that Father Gregory Gay, Superior General of the CM has told us that Father Eli Chaves will take on a different apostolic mission.  We are very grateful for the guidance he has given us and we will definitely miss him a lot, although he has promised to support us in other ways, notably through the development of a training document that he has begun with the Executive Board.

 We would like to welcome Father Alvaro Mauricio Fernández, CM, from Colombia, who recently finished his time as AIC National Spiritual Advisor in his country and whom many of you will remember from our International Assembly in Guatemala, in which he participated.

LOGO FOR THE 400^TH ANNIVERSARY

We are continuing with the preparations for the 400^th Anniversary and have designed a logo which captures the moment.  As you will remember we ran a competition so that you could give us your proposals.  We would like to thank all the volunteers who offered their valuable and attractive ideas.  In the end, during the last Permanent Committee meeting in June, we decided to combine several of the proposals and ideas we had received.  We noticed that various elements kept coming up:

• The image of Saint Vincent
• A map of the world
• The number 400
• Modifications based on the logo that we have used during the last 3 Assemblies

We hope you will be happy with the final decision.

Once again we invite you to continue with this stage of the preparation process.  As you will remember, the proposition for 2015 and 2016 is: Communicating the Vincentian charism.  We are sure that in each country you will have the creativity to do this in the best way, in accordance with your culture.

The most important thing is to pass on our ideals, which are inspired by the teachings of our founders Saint Vincent and Saint Louise.  To supplement the material that you already have in your countries, we are sending you extracts from the Chapters of the AIC Charter every month.

We are aware that it is also good to have visual tools and we shared some ideas at the International Assembly in Guatemala.  Designing the logo is part of this strategy and will be very useful in achieving our objectives.

We have left the slogan for later when we are closer to 2017, the Year of the Celebration.

 In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis tells us:

“Goodness always tends to spread. Every authentic experience of truth and goodness seeks by its very nature to grow within us, and any person who has experienced a profound liberation becomes more sensitive to the needs of others. As it expands, goodness takes root and develops.” (Paragraph 9)

We invite you all to unite with us to be bearers of good news, fulfilling in this way the Vincentian mission that we have received from Christ.

We send you our kindest regards, hoping that the spirit of Saint Vincent and Saint Louise will continue to remain with us always.

          Alicia Duhne                                                               Tayde de Callataÿ

International President                                                      General Manager