Formation Course for Capuchin Librarians, Archivists, and Curators
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International College ‘San Lorenzo da Brindisi’, 3-9 September 2017
A group of forty, both religious and others, who work in Capuchin institutions of cultural heritage (archives, libraries, and museums) met at our International College during the week of this past September 3-9. This is an annual event which has offered, for the last fifteen years, an opportunity for dialogue, encounter, study, and encouragement for those working in cultural service and study, toward the end of giving value to the heritage of knowledge, spirituality, and apostolate which we owe to our confreres who have gone before us.
This year five fundamental topics were studied in depth: the religious and civil responsibilities of directors of our cultural institutions, the organization and enjoyment of museums, the formative and pastoral value of the Church’s cultural heritage, supervision, management and solutions for infestations, and the archiving, conservation, and use of documents in digital format.
Corso dei bibliotecari – presentazione in italiano
During the week there was also time for a guided visit to the Franciscan friary of San Bonaventura al Palatino, founded in the seventeenth century by Blessed Bonaventure of Barcelona on the ruins of an imperial palace, and to the nearby church of St. Sebastian, titular church of Cardinal Frederick O’Brien and currently cared for by one of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, a recent religious foundation that seeks to bring monastic spirituality into cities as the ‘deserts’ of our time.
Corso dei bibliotecari
The majority of the participants in the program were Italian, but others came also from Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, the Czech Republic, the USA, and Ethiopia. Everyone had the opportunity to work together on a fraternal reflection regarding the main elements of their service and to study certain specific questions. Once again it was confirmed that a commitment to culture, at every level, whether general, provincial, or local, traces anew the logic of the incarnation in which the divine expresses and mingles itself inseparably with the human. In this way, through the quality of our care in the conservation, use and valuing of cultural heritage, we have a faithful mirror of our spiritual life, a gospel witness, and an apostolic activity.
As usual, the course also provided an occasion to update the cumulative catalog of Capuchin libraries, especially in Franciscan studies, in which thirty-nine of our institutions participate, with more than million online records in the Directory per l’anagrafe delle Istituzuioni culturali Cappuccine and the Authoritative File of Capuchin authors (www.ibisweb.it/bcc).
The course, as in the past, was held in Italian and English with simultaneous translation. Next year’s course will be held at the Domus Laetitiae in Assisi, during the week of July 29 to August 4, 2018.