On this Martyrs’ Day, it gives me great joy to write to you and congratulate every single member of the English College.
As you probably all know, from next week I am going to live in Santa Marinella (the coast side of Rome) and that’s why I address you all.I will be giving a hand to the parish church in this little town and hopefully my mother, who will be retired next year, will visit me. You can understand that as a human being I need to set up in my own place and space. In the future – please God – I hope to do a doctorate in the field of Social Communication, which is my specialization as a priest.
I encourage you to strive towards the ideal of priesthood. Pope John Paul II used to say than when he was in Rome he started to “study Rome”. I believe that the VEC is a place of dialogue for British and Italian cultures that finds its meeting point in the Catholic faith; go on with originality and never lose your spontaneity.
I must publicly say than I am grateful for the Rector and his staff for allowing me to stay in the college during this new step of my priesthood. In formation we never stop, there is always the possibility to become more mature and to be responsible for the actions we perform. Some situations push you to do this and living outside of the frantic city of Rome can help me.
Thanks to all, especially the “personale” that serve us every day and to all my friends. I am not sad, because to me, outside of the VEC it is still possible to deepen existing friendships. I apologise that I couldn’t share as much time with you as I wanted but my timetable is made in another way. I am sure we will meet soon!
By the way, for all those who don’t know what I am doing, please know that at the moment I am not studying. I am working at the Pontifical Council for Social Communication, and I’m in charge of the Spanish section for recruitment to the Vatican. I ask you for your prayers as I serve in this work.
God bless you all,
Ariel Beramendi
1st December 2006
