Congratulations to the participants of the English language Training for 2025 who will Graduate as Facilitators from the 14 week program that comes to its conclusion at this time. You have all done wonderful work, dedicated yourself to the process of personal growth and been open to the significant shifts that need to take place within us for us to be effective facilitators.
One MSC Sister, Cecilia Kim, four Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Cathie Mwagioidi, Fabeline Santos Castro, Quindoline Wihlahyuy, Ruth Ybran, MSC brother Simon Lumpini, and six MSC priests, Richie Gomez, Nords Adlaon, Krish Mathavan, Quy Bui, Darwin Thatheus, Sylvester ToWarakai, joined with Trainers, Wendy Bignell, Gene Pejo, and Chris Chaplin for the rich and rewarding program.
Congratulations on the incredible work of the trainers of this group and congratulations to the group for their generous participation. We wish you every blessing.
Below are some photographs of the trainer groups during the practicum in Rome and two written contributions. Thanks to Wendy Bignell and Cathy Mwagioidi for sharing with us their experience and insights.
From Wendy Bignell one of the facilitation Trainers
The 2025 Training in Group Facilitation Course in English finished on 16th June 2025. It was the third year that the Program had been offered. As a new co-facilitator of the 2025 Course with Chris Chaplin and Gene Pejo, I have since been reflecting on what made the Course such a special experience for all who participated and so enriching for myself. I would like to share some of my reflections and insights as a Facilitator with you.
I found the Course itself excellent. It was created and endorsed in response to stated priorities from 2017 General Assembly. The need had been identified and prioritized.
The Course was comprised of ten Modules of content delivered over fourteen weeks of online self-paced learning from 1st March to 16th June. The components in the structure of the course were cohesive and reinforcing. The Full Course itself has been given high praise by many for its creative and unique construction, its engaging approach and its volume and depth of content.
There were twelve Course participants in 2025. The identification and registration of participants involved recommendations by Provincials and Leaders and were drawn from the wider Chevalier Family. In this year’s cohort there were seven MSC, one MSC Sister and four DOLSH Sisters. This diversity of gender, locations and missions enriched the interactions and sharing. The Course is deeply grounded in and highly reflective of the MSC Charism and Spirituality of the Heart.
My immersion and resonance with MSC reignited and strengthened the flame within me.
The course exposed Trainees to a great many experiential methodologies moving them beyond theory to embodied practice. The Training skills were able to be trialled and refined by most in real situations as the Course progressed. The relevance of the content and the degree of application was more than I had expected. Critical to the structure of the Course is the allocation and accompaniment of a Trainer to each Trainee within an Online Learning Community of four Trainees for the duration of the Course. Weekly accompaniment is vital in support for the Trainee. It enables scope for depthing, processing questions and issues that may arise. With my background as a Clinical Psychotherapist and Spiritual Director, I found the opportunity for deep connection and personal journeywork invaluable.
The OLC and Triads showed possibilities to provide much needed and appreciated peer network and support structures. Trainees even expressed a desire to continue after the Course because of its acknowledged value.
For myself the two-week face-to-face experiential practicum in Rome from 20th April to 2nd May was an integral and integrative highlight. Coming together to Rome, meeting and working face to face with the four trainees from our online learning group and six of the other Trainees together with the two other Trainers, Chris Chaplin and Gene Pejo was not only enriching and Community Building but also dynamic, transformative and expansive. Grounding each day in Trainee-led dynamic and experiential processes such as Communal Wisdom, Mirroring Prototyping and Deep Sharing created a sacred crucible of shared Faith and learning and a joyous celebrating Community. As a Facilitator it gave me further scope to step back and ‘let go and let God.
Wendy Bignell (Australia)
Trainer in The English Training in Group Facilitation 2025 and
Member of the Ongoing Formation Commission
Further information on the course and Wendy’s profile is available on the MSC Ongoing Formation Website
From Cathy Mwagioidi FDNSC – Graduate of the 2025 English training
Facilitation Training Practicum, 20th April – 3rd May 2025, Ursuline Sisters Convent, Rome
From April 20 to May 3, ten participants gathered at the Ursuline Sisters Convent in Rome for a two-week Intensive Facilitation Training Practicum. This diverse group included four FDNSC Sisters, one MSC Sister, and five MSC priests, coming from seven different countries. We were blessed to be accompanied and formed by three experienced trainers: Wendy Bignell (a laywoman from Australia), Fr. Chris Chaplin MSC, and Fr. Gene Pejo MSC, both members of the MSC General Leadership Team.
The training was designed as an intensive, experiential learning process focused on facilitation. Over 11 full working days, we engaged in six sessions each day, dedicated to deepening our understanding and practice of facilitation through real-time experience, reflection, and group process. Rather than focusing on theoretical input, the emphasis was placed on learning by doing, observing, and receiving feedback grounding us in a style of leadership that listens deeply, discerns communally, and accompanies others with presence and care.
Our days began and ended with moments of prayer and Eucharist. On Monday, April 21, we celebrated a special Opening Mass and Ritual in the Chapel, entrusting our journey to the Spirit and to one another. A similar ritual marked our Closing Mass on Friday, May 2, during which the trainees themselves facilitated the liturgy, offering a meaningful symbol of the growth and integration we had undergone. On most mornings, participants had the option to join the Ursuline community for Mass, while our trainers joined the MSC Generalate community nearby.
A particularly profound and historic moment occurred during our training: on April 21, we received the sad news of the death of Pope Francis. As a group gathered in Rome for learning, discernment, and prayer, we were deeply moved to be present at this moment in the life of the Church. Attending the funeral Mass of Pope Francis was a humbling and grace-filled experience. Our hearts were heavy with grief but also filled with immense gratitude for the life of a shepherd who led with compassion, humility, and a deep love for the people. His legacy of integrity, simplicity, and Gospel-centered leadership will continue to inspire the Church for generations to come. During our time in Rome, we also witnessed the election of the new Pope another powerful reminder of the Spirit’s continued guidance and the ongoing renewal of the Church.
A highlight of our own community life was the social evenings with the MSC General House community on April 25 and May 2. These gatherings allowed us to relax, share stories, and deepen bonds across congregations and cultures.
Each training day followed a structured rhythm:
Session 1: Practice of Communal Wisdom (CW), using the discernment method described in Communal Wisdom: A Way of Discernment for a Pilgrim Church by Fr. Brian Gallagher MSC.
Session 2: Group review of the CW session reflecting on what happened within the group and for the facilitator.
Session 3: Co-facilitation of prepared scenarios by pairs of trainees, offering an opportunity to design and lead a process with the full group.
Session 4: Review of the facilitated scenario, using the same reflective principles.
Session 5: Quads—small groups assigned to each trainer, fostering self-directed facilitation in a space with no set agenda, allowing real group dynamics to emerge and be processed.
Session 6: Accompaniment—a flexible time with each trainer deciding how best to support the growth of their group through individual or collective reflection.
Saturday, April 26, was dedicated to integration of the first week’s learning, guided by the trainers through structured exercises in reflection, harvesting, and shared insight. The final day, May 2, echoed this integration with a focus on closure and synthesis, bringing together our learning from Modules 1-4 and Intensive Practicum of the facilitation training.
Throughout the practicum, trainees were consistently invited into a stance of curiosity, openness, and responsibility:
What are you sensing?
What do you think?
What have you experienced?
What did you find worked or didn’t and why?
This approach cultivated not only skills, but a facilitative presence grounded in listening, discernment, and communal wisdom hallmarks of a leadership that reflects the Heart of Jesus.
It was a rich time of formation and transformation, deepened by intercultural and inter-congregational exchange, and profoundly touched by the unfolding life of the Church in Rome. As we returned to our respective ministries, we carried with us new tools, deeper awareness, and a renewed commitment to serve with hearts attuned to the Spirit’s movement in community and in the various ministry.
Thankyou Chris, Wendy, Gene for this wonderful and meaningful program. A deep gratitude to you. Our deep appreciation and gratitude to our respective communities for your support.
Sr. Cathie Mwagioidi FDNSC (Papua New Guinea)
My Experience of the Practicum Training in Group Facilitation
On Easter Sunday this year (20th April 2025), ten of us from the Chevalier family comprising four Sisters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (OLSH), one Missionary Sister of the Sacred Heart (MSS), and five Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) met together at the Ursuline Sisters convent in Rome to begin a time of growing together in the skills of group facilitation.
Prior to this workshop, we had begun an online journey of learning the theory and dynamics around group facilitation. We had diligently completed the first four online modules over a little more than a month, while also participating in an online learning community (OLC) of 3-4 in size where we practised the art of mirroring to each other our experiences of challenge. In the OLC, we took turns to hold space for each to share, resisted the temptation of trying to solve the problem, and opened to the Spirit to inspire words and images that can bring light to the experience. It was also a time I got to know my group more intimately in their ministries across the world. In that first month, each of us also journeyed closely with an experienced trainer who checked in on how we were doing with the course content and any difficulties we faced. This grew an anticipation as we gathered in Rome to finally meet in person. There were twelve participants who started the journey, but two could not make it to Rome because of visa and other difficulties. We also had three trainers join us: Wendy Bignell, Gene Pejo and Chris Chaplin, the latter two from the General Leadership Team of the MSCs.
The workshop officially started on Easter Monday when we were introduced to each other and to the communal wisdom process that involved listening to each other as a stepping stone to what the Spirit was saying to us in common. During the morning break, news started filtering in that Pope Francis had died earlier that morning. There was disbelief that quickly turned to shock and sadness. For many of us, Pope Francis had been a source of inspiration and wisdom. His constant encouragement for the Church to risk being bruised and reach out to the peripheries, to be a field hospital for the wounded, for the pastors to smell like the sheep, for all of humanity to care for our common home left an enduring challenge as we processed our loss over the next few days. We brought some of these insights and sentiments to share in the opening Mass as part of our initiation into this practicum. Grief would prove to be a consistent vulnerability in our time together, and perhaps a ‘thorn in the flesh’ too, as in that time, news came in of other losses we also suffered individually of the people we knew.
For the next few days in that first week, we took turns in pairs to lead each facilitation, based on a pre-planned communal wisdom process, then we also had fun taking turns to facilitate the group in various scenarios that involved brainstorming and role-playing. The review after each session was much needed as we learnt to be sensitive to what worked and what did not. The trainers were often spot on with their feedback and I felt like I learnt so much about the actual group dynamics and how I came across to others in such a facilitation scenario. We could frame our learning to sense the Spirit according to the four movements of the Spirituality of the Heart., namely encounter, intimacy, conversion and mission. We had varying degrees of being at home in this process of group facilitation and communal discernment, but it was certainly a concrete expression of living out a heart spirituality.
The first week ended with the decision to participate in the funeral requiem Mass for Pope Francis. The turnout in Rome for the day was almost half a million. Following that, we came back, and Chris and the trainers facilitated a session where we processed communally how we have been affected by the losses and letting go of the past week. This started with finding a symbol that represented our grief and placing it in the central heart-space by way of honouring our reality. The process ended as we sensed in each other the Spirit’s prompting to give thanks for what is/was and to come together to celebrate life as a community. This would be one of the highlights for me during the practicum that I remember well.
In the second week of the practicum, we continued to finetune the art of facilitation as deep listening to each other where we are in our sentiments, including conflict, and to the Spirit calling us communally to mission from that place of willing vulnerability. I have learnt to better read the group and trust my instincts in leading as a facilitator, and even to come to see facilitation as a gracious stance to have in life. I have also made some wonderfully gifted friends and collaborators in the Lord’s vineyard and for all of this, I am most grateful.
Krish Jon Mathavan msc
Australian Province
14 June 2025