Good Bye...

For the new term of office, at the General Assembly in Madrid, a new Executive Board was elected, to which I wish great satisfaction. After serving as President of LAI from 2018 to 2023, I am stepping down from this responsibility; And with these few lines I come to say "goodbye" ...

My first words will go to those who have accompanied me during the mandate that has just passed: I warmly thank Monique Ptak, Jaime Tamarit, Christian Liebenguth who deserves a "tip of the hat" for the courage he had to carry out his duties despite his illness, Jean-Michel Siméon who helped me a lot by putting his long experience at the service of LAI,  Mgr Maupu who was a companion on the road attentive to our concerns, wise in his recommendations and anxious to link the identity of LAI to the source that is Christ.

I am leaving, because, as Qoheleth says, "there is a time for everything and a time to do everything under heaven."

I'm leaving..., my heart imbued with a real emotion, the one you feel when you leave a family.

I'm leaving... the spirit rich in all that I have experienced, thanks to you, members and leaders of LAI, spread across Africa, South America, Asia, Europe; In the exercise of my function, there has been no shortage of difficulties and tensions, but they have not obliterated the great moments that I have been given to live: among these great moments, the initiatives taken by the Dicastery with which I have been associated and a stay in Uganda which allowed me to meet the leaders and members of LA Uganda.

I'm leaving... the soul nourished by the joy of Christ's disciple: I have tried to give this witness as a disciple through my mission as President, going through difficulties and even failures; On the strength of this joy, I will continue, in union of thought and prayer with all of you, to move forward with this unfailing hope that activates the spark of intelligence that God puts in every man, and that can change the world because, as the philosopher Christian Bobin wrote, "intelligence is the solitary force to extract from the chaos of one's own life the handful of light to illuminate a little further than oneself,  to the other over there, lost in the dark"

Be each and every one of you, in your own way, this "handful of light".

Monique Bodhuin