A Double Grace — Blessed Jacques Laval and the 60th Anniversary of the Generalate

Generalate, Jacques Laval

The Spiritan community at the Generalate gathered with deep joy and gratitude to celebrate a double anniversary: the feast of Blessed Jacques Laval and the 60 years of the Generalate House at Clivo di Cinna, the heart of the Congregation’s service of communion, governance, and missionary discernment. The celebration brought together confreres, sisters, lay collaborators, and friends who joined in prayer and thanksgiving for this milestone in the Congregation’s history.

50 Eventful Years of the Mission

Mozambique

“After a very happy childhood and adolescence in the countryside on the south coast of Ireland, I entered the Spiritan novitiate in September 1966.” Thus begins a missionary story that would take John Kingston, an Irishman, to Angola, Rome, Dublin and Mozambique, the country where he now resides.

Father Jacques Laval: Joy and Inspiration for the Spiritans

Jacques Laval

Father Jacques Désiré Laval was raised to the glory of the altars on 29 April 1979, during the first beatification of Pope Saint John Paul II’s pontificate. What is striking in that homily is that the Pope does not merely celebrate a missionary of the past; he invites us to contemplate a man entirely given to God, whose life remains a light for the Church today.