At the heart of Asia today, with its teeming millions, where motherhood is treasured and womanhood left degraded and voiceless, a young population whose youth are exploited, with its super-cities, unprecedented affluence and dehumanising poverty, racial and religious conflict, migration and displacement of peoples, rich diversity of ancient religious traditions and diminishing contact with spiritual roots, innate reverence for creation and mindless destruction of environment, emerging cyber culture with its benefits and dangers …

We, pilgrim people, experience a call to continue God's saving action in Jesus Christ for the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom of life, with a renewed focus on personal and community faith life in order to provide effective witness to gospel values, through a personal relationship with Christ and openness to being evangelised by the poor and marginalised.

We realize we are entering a new stage in the journey to God which challenges us to seek new understandings, expanding relationships and a spirituality adequate to this moment in Asia.

1.  MISSION

• Religious life refuses to accept boundaries. It is a dynamic life-giving and life-sustaining movement. It remains a primary agent of change in the church.
• A need for wider participation in the life and mission of the church in Asia [EA #45].
• Request to FABC, religious congregations and other bodies to monitor the work of religious working in difficult situations in certain Asian countries and find new ways of giving affirmation, practical assistance and effective solidarity.

• Encourage, recognise new ways of being community for mission [EA #44]
• A life of prayer and contemplation that is genuinely Asian must be the well-spring for meaningful presence within community and in community outreach.
• A sense of hospitality, an openness to people of other walks of life.
• Stewardship of community resources: accountability, transparency, ethical aspects of investment policies, requirements of justice, structural solidarity.

• Update resources and opportunities for spiritual growth ‘in response to cultural forces which tend to marginalise the religious dimension of life, if not actually to deny it.’ [VC #103]
• A spirituality of justice in an inter-dependent and suffering world.
• Formation be in line with the triple dialogue advocated by FABC, include adequate exposure to Asian realities, namely the poor, cultures and other living faiths.
• Training formators in the Asian context, with an emphasis on evangelical feminism.

• The call to integrate with the pastoral plan of the diocese is based on a respect for the particular charism, and
• on an understanding of the pastoral plan which includes outreach services beyond the Christian community.
• Communion with the laity [EA #25]

• We encourage religious to view their vocation within the wider context of Asian religious traditions.
• In the case of male religious communities of Brothers & Priests, we urge the members to rediscover the religious dimension of their vocation.
• We urge efforts be made to deepen their appreciation of the role of religious Brothers.

• FABC, and existing Asian Religious Associations, Forums e.g. SEAMS, AMOR ..

Religious life refuses to accept boundaries. It is a dynamic life-giving and life-sustaining movement. It must remain a primary agent of change in the church.

Therefore we recommend

1.  New style of formation in an Asian spiritual context, a formation that includes solid grounding in scripture, theology and anthropology, exposure to forms of prayer and contemplation that are genuinely Asian, that will provide a well-spring for meaningful presence within community and in community outreach, and a spirituality of justice in a suffering world. We suggest a climate of feminism that flows from the Gospel values of love, compassion and service.

2.  Integrate with the pastoral plan of the diocese based on a respect for the particular charism and on an understanding that the pastoral plan include outreach beyond the Christian community, and the sharing of the particular charism and spirituality with lay partners, even those of other faiths.