The Camillian Task Force (CTF Central) held a six-day conference at the Centro di Humanizacion (a Camillian pastoral center) in Madrid, Spain from July 9-15. The conference was hosted by the Spanish Province. Participants from Kenya, Italy, Spain and the Philippines (represented by Aris Miranda) joined the conference and shared their accomplishments and future plans for the promotion of the CTF mission.  Most of the participants were our lay collaborators.

The conference was graced by the presence of two distinguished mentors in various fields of expertise. Magister Eva Munker-Kramer from Austria  gave the conference on psychotraumatology as an approach in assisting disaster victims suffering from post-traumatic disorder. Mag. Eva runs a Center for Applied Psychotraumatology in Vienna. The second resource person, Fr. Arnaldo Pangrazzi, MI, gave the conference on Spiritual Care in Disasters. Fr. Arnaldo is a professor at the Camillianum Institute on Pastoral Health Care and an itinerant speaker on pastoral health care.

The conference aimed primarily at exploring possibilities of collaboration between the CTF and the various Camillian pastoral centers all over the world to promote the CTF mission.  The CTF Central, whose office is at the Generalate, vows to continue making the various human and material resources of the Order available in order to enhance this special ministry among sick people in places affected by man-made and natural disasters.

On-going major projects of the CTF were also unveiled during the conference.  These are “Project St. Camillus in Abruzzo”, which is a two year intervention program for the victims of the recent earthquake in Aquila and the “new school of charity”, which is an on-going project for the slums in Nairobi, Kenya undertaken in cooperation with the Camillian pastoral center.

At the end of the conference, the participants took the major step of starting to develop a curriculum of formation for CTF volunteers as part of its strategic planning. CTF members saw the need to be more aggressive in its promotion due to the urgency of the time. The SOS DRS in the US is supporting all the efforts of the CTF in propagating its mission.