When I was asked to say a few words today, I immediately asked Jean Jacques to join me. This is not because I am lazy and wished to do only half the work. It is because I believe that all Dominican work should be shared. When the Lord sent out the disciples, he sent them two by two, and never alone. The solitary Dominican can easily come to think that he is the good news, he is the star. When we work together we point to the Lord who sent us both. Admittedly it will be hard to work with Jean Jacques, the French have been very difficult ever since the crisis of the mad English cows. And they have become intolerable since they won so many medals at the Olympic games. But I ask you to be patient, and nice to him.

Also, it says something important about how we wish to work with you, our lay friends. It is my hope that we will work side by side, with mutual respect and equality. The Lord sends us out together, like the disciples. The Dominican laity always flourishes the best when we brothers accept that you have a mission too, and that we are partners in mission. Everywhere I go I discover groups of lay people who are alive with a passion to preach. It could be new groups which preach in the barrios of Mexico City, or groups of lay people preaching in the Amazon, or it could be groups working with Universities, such as Glasgow in Scotland.

Sometimes it may be that we look to you to help in our projects, but sometimes it will be the other way around, and it is we brothers and sisters who will have to help you with your mission. In that way there will be real equality and collaboration.

I will start by saying a little bit, for twenty minutes, about what we hope to receive from you. And then Jean Jacques will talk for twenty minutes (if he is capable of speaking for such a short time), upon what we hope that you can receive from us. So as to give everyone a chance to understand something, we will change languages from time to time. Though, having just spent almost four weeks in Brazil, and a week in Rome, my Spanish is more a mixture of Portuguese and Italian.

Be young.

Most of you are young and lay. So the first thing that I ask of you is to be young. Of course, there are many different definitions of young. I even found a Vicariate in Taiwan which used a definition of “young” that would have included me! But that is a bit absurd.

I start with the idea of “youth” because it seems to me that for the Order of Preachers, the world of the young is one of the biggest challenges that we face. How can we preach the good news to the young today ? We need your help to discover the right words and the right way.

I have the impression that the world of the youth today is radically different in the way it sees things from twenty years ago. I grew up at a moment when there was a deep polarisation between left and right, conservative and progressive. In many countries, the young do not recognise themselves in this split. This can be a puzzle and a problem for people of my generation. You have a different perception and different agenda. The Provinces which are receiving many vocations today, often seem to be those where we let the young be young, where we refuse to impose our quarrels, our battles on you.

So the first thing I say is this : Be young, and help us to discover with you how the gospel may be preached in the world of today's youth. Many young people are filled with a thirst for God, and have a wonderful generosity and openness. Yet often there is a suspicion of the Church and any institution. How can we speak the good news of the gospel in terms that make sense in this new world ?

Be Lay.

The second thing that we receive from you is the fact that many of you are lay people. We do not want you to pretend to be half-members of a religious Order, half friars or half sisters. We need you because you are lay and bring something wonderful and valuable for that reason.

One of the joys of the General Chapter was the presence of two Spanish lay people, Rosa María García González and José Llópez Barberá. They brought a lot to the Chapter. And we were surprised when we discovered that they were going to have a baby. We discovered this before we realised that they were married to each other! I think that it was the first time that a member of the General Chapter was pregnant. That adds a whole new dimension to the Dominican family. José and Rosa María could bring all the experience of conceiving a child, of birth, of parenthood to our preaching of the gospel. I remember what a rich moment it was for the Dominican community in Cambridge when a baby was born there.

How can we preach the full gospel if it is not rooted in that experience which some of you have but we do not have, of marriage and parenthood, of sexuality and fertility ?

But you also bring all the experience and wisdom and knowledge of lay people. This can be of all sorts. I remember meeting a group of lay Dominicans in Benin, who were all political prisoners. The group had formed in prison. Think of what new insights they could bring to us !

One of my favourite groups of lay Dominicans runs a lepers' colony in the Philippines. In fact half of our brothers in that community are lepers. They often wear a form of the habit, and I remember how proud I was when I saw them coming to take part in a meeting of the Dominican Family in Manila. They brought to us an experience that none of us had. Another lay group in the Philippines actually runs a very professional hospital.

One of the new ways of preaching which I believe to be important is that of Internet. In May we had a meeting of brothers and sisters who were interested and skilled in this area. But it was very important that we had two lay people who came as well, and who brought their personal expertise. One was an American friend of mine, who is the head of technology for OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), the other was a Norwegian lay Dominican, Jan Frederick Solen, who is now the director of our co-ordinating team for preaching on the Internet. It is the first time that, as far as I know, a lay person has been the head of a new preaching mission of the Order.

One of the interesting new initiatives is the opening of an Internet Café , by a French Dominican, Remi. It will be a place where young people can drop in, have conversations, hang around, and drink cyber coffee.

Creativity.

Thirdly I would say that we need your creativity ! One of the questions that I often put to the brothers during my visitations is this: “How in this society can we communicate the good news? How can we get across the barriers of misunderstanding or hostility ?” It is not enough for preachers to stand in the pulpit on a Sunday and say a few words. That may reach those who are Christians, but what about those who never come to Church.

When the brothers first came to Guatemala, in the time of Las Casas, they refused the protection of the army. They accepted to be the evangelists of this new area, but on condition that they went alone. They knew that the gospel cannot come with the protection of swords. But they found that every time they went into the mountains to preach the gospel, they were killed. How could they reach these people and share the good news ?

What they did was to compose songs about Christ. They taught these songs to the indigenous merchants who were the only people who could freely walk in the mountains. So the merchants travelled from one village to another, singing songs about Christ. Then, later, the brethren could come and preach. The ways had been prepared by song ! That part of Guatemala is still called Vera Paz, true peace, because the missionaries came peacefully. Then later the soldiers came and killed not only the Indians but also many of our brethren who defended them.

How can we enter the world of youth? It may be less dangerous but it requires just as much imagination. Song can also be one way. One thinks of the Croatian Rock band the Messengers of Hope.

This year two of our Irish brethren, Gavin Byrne and Ian Callanan won prizes for their musical compositions. The song that won the first prize was composed by Gavin, and played by musicians who were members of the Dominican Youth Council. I am told that Tricia Nolan does wonderful things with a violin and on a piano! Gavin is also composing a Passion play for performance at Tallaght next year. We need your imagination to think of ways to break through the world of indifference and reach the young, those who reject Christ. We need all your creativity, as musicians, poets, artists, all the creativity of your sense of humour.

I like to make a distinction between imagination and fantasy. We live in a world of fantasy, which is an escape from the world. This year in America, the great obsession is with films about invasions of aliens from outer space. Independence Day is one of the most popular films ever made. People take refuge in sexual fantasy, fantasy of destroying the enemy, fantasy of greatness...

The opposite of fantasy is creativity. It doesn't run away from the world, but it transforms it. The devil would seduce us with fantasy, but Christ invites us to share in the most creative acts of all, that of death and resurrection ! That is why preachers have always been creative people. We have had painters, from the time of Fra Angelico, to Kim, the Korean Dominican today. I have a giant picture of Kim hanging in my office in Rome, and I am always fascinated by people's reactions when they see it. You can tell me what you think when you come and see me in S. Sabina. We need poets, like Paul Murray; we need film makers, dancers, newspaper reporters, acrobats, clowns, sportsmen and women. We need imagination to get across the good news.

I hope that during these days you will have some crazy ideas as to how to preach today. It is better to have five crazy ideas and find that one might work, than to have none at all !

We need you to disturb us.

We need you to disturb our lives! If we work with young lay people, then it will turn our lives upside down. We will find that you want to speak to speak to us when we want a siesta, that you will ruin the silence of our day off, that you will disturb our ideas, and challenge our assumptions. We need friends who will do that for us !

Religious life is a wonderful idea, and when we join we are filled with idealism and generosity. We have come to give all that we have and are. We are ready to leave for China or the moon. Often as we get older, we settle down and want our little comforts, a quiet life. Then the real sign of friendship will be that you dare to challenge us and remind us of the dreams and generosity that brought us to the Dominicans in the first place.

I hope that you will challenge us when our preaching is too superficial, when we say what we do not mean and take refuge in easy words that mean nothing. I hope that you will challenge us when we produce automatic answers because we have stopped thinking. Then we need friends like you who will not let us get away with it.

We also will challenge you too ! But maybe Jean Jacques will say something about that !

We need your courage.

It takes courage to be a preacher. It may be the courage just to speak about the gospel in a society that is hostile or indifferent, or it could be the physical courage to face death. We need your courage not because we lack it, but because there is a need for all the courage that we can find at the moment.

I have often been impressed by the courage of our brothers and sisters in these last years. I will give just two examples, but they could stand for hundreds. I was recently in northern Brazil, in the state of Para, on the edges of the Amazon. Here one of our brothers, Henri Burrin des Roziers, works as a lawyer. He fights for the rights of the local peasants, who were encouraged to move there by the promose of land, and then found that it was all taken forcibly by the great landowners. The peasants are often enslaved, and once they have done their work they are shot. Their bodies are sometimes boiled and fed to the pigs. Anyone who organises resistance is shot. The last four trade unions in this tiny town, almost a village, have been shot. Henri fights every case. He lives with another priest who speaks out publicly on every occasion. The deaths have decreased in numbers, but the death threats against Henri and Richardo have increased. Now they have been assigned body guards by the Federal Police, but since the Federal Police do much of the killing this is not much of a reassurance. They could go on preaching.

I think of the courage of a young Swiss Dominican who has moved to Rwanda as novice Master, Didier, and stays there, never knowing what may happen.

I think of a French brother, Jean Pierre, who is in Algeria. When the fundamentalists shot the two religious who ran the local library, he immediately volunteered to take their place.

I think of the courage of the innumerable sisters I have met who live in the barrios of the cities in Latin America, in the midst of violence day after day.

I think of the courage of the lay Dominicans who kept the tradition of the Order alive in Russia during the years of communism, and who formed the first new vocations of the brothers.

So there are just a few thoughts of what I hope you will give us.