On July 14, participants in the Poitiers Session began the day with the Eucharist at the Basilica of Our Lady of Monteagudo, presided over by Valentinus Sedu Ritan sscc, from the Province of Indonesia and currently a member of the Pierre Coudrin community in Picpus. He encouraged us, in the place where Damien entrusted his future to God, to ask for that same grace: "the courage to trust rather than be ruled by fear, openness to conversion rather than indifference, and zeal to love one another as true brothers and sisters."
Valent then offered a talk on the figure of Father Rolf Reichenbach sscc, a German missionary who died in 2004 after forty-five years of apostolic dedication in Indonesia. In a tone both narrative and spiritual, he proposed re-reading Rolf Reichenbach's journey through the four ages of the life of Jesus Christ — childhood, hidden life, public life, and crucified life — a framework that, as he recalled, echoes the founding intuition of Father Jean Vincent González sscc regarding the purpose of the Institute: to reproduce in the community the four seasons of the Lord.
Following this thread, the speaker traced Rolf's childhood in Cologne, marked by the rise of Nazism, the persecution his family suffered because of his father's Jewish origin, and the exile of the three siblings to the Netherlands in 1939. He also recalled how reading the life of Saint Damien of Molokai awakened in young Rolf the desire to consecrate himself to God and to the poorest, a spiritual bond with the apostle to the lepers that would accompany him his whole life.
The talk then moved to his formation years in Ginneken and Valkenburg, his priestly ordination in 1958, and his departure for Indonesia the following year, leading into a public life marked by service to Catholic communities scattered across the Riau Islands, care for Vietnamese refugees — the so-called boat people — and his accompaniment of the first Sisters of the Sacred Hearts to arrive in Indonesia in 1997. Finally, he evoked the period of illness and Rolf Reichenbach's death in 2004, read as his particular "crucified life," lived with the same silent fidelity that had characterized his entire mission.
At the close of his talk, Valentinus Sedu Ritan posed a question to those present that would run through the entire workshop time that followed: what lesson does the witness of a missionary who sought not honors but daily fidelity to the mission received offer today to the young brothers and sisters of the Sacred Hearts.
Deepening workshops
After the talk, participants split into four groups, each of which explored one of the four ages of Christ's life through Rolf Reichenbach's journey, putting it in dialogue with their own vocation. The childhood group reflected on how God prepares every vocation long before it is recognized, drawing on Jeremiah 1:5. The hidden-life group considered what nourishes each person's interior life today, illuminated by Luke 2:52. The third group addressed public life and service with a missionary heart in light of Matthew 25:40, asking who today are the "poor" to whom the Congregation is sent. The last group worked around the crucified life and fidelity in trial, based on Galatians 2:20.
The workshop closed with a phrase attributed to Rolf Reichenbach himself, which sums up the spirit of the whole day: "My mission is to touch the hearts of the faithful through the simplicity of my love and the fidelity of my prayer."
On Tuesday afternoon, Valeria Gomes dos Santos sscc, joining by videoconference from Brazil, gave a talk on Blessed Eustaquio van Lieshout, a Sacred Hearts religious who was beatified and is remembered in Brazil as a consecrated man "with the gift of healing."
A Dutchman who kindled popular devotion in Brazil
Valeria traced Eustaquio's biography, born on November 3, 1890, in Aarle-Rixtel, the Netherlands, the eighth of nine children in a deeply Catholic family from the southern Netherlands. Marked from childhood by the witness of Saint Damien of Molokai, he entered the Sacred Hearts novitiate in Tremeloo (Belgium) in 1913, professed in 1915, and was ordained a priest in 1919.
In 1925 he fulfilled his missionary ideal: he was one of the three founders of the Congregation's first community in Brazil, in Romaria, where he promoted the building of the Shrine of Our Lady of Abadia de Água Suja and the founding of two schools. Years later, as parish priest in Poá (São Paulo), his reputation as a healer — linked to holy water he himself brought from Lourdes — drew crowds and led to his forced transfer, first to Rio Claro under a false name, and later on a journey through various towns across the country, as it proved impossible to contain the flow of the faithful.
The talk also covered his time in Patrocínio and Ibiá, and his final months as parish priest in Belo Horizonte, where the capacity of the Christ the King chapel had to be tripled and numbered cards had to be introduced to manage pilgrims' access. Eustaquio died on August 30, 1943, a victim of epidemic typhus, after just sixteen months of intense apostolic work in that city.
Keys to reading a consecrated life
Beyond the biographical account, Sister Gomes offered participants in the Poitiers Session a deeper reading: what the figure of Eustaquio says today about a consecrated life that is both realistic and fulfilled. Among the traits she highlighted were the "pedagogy of encounter" — closeness, listening, and going out to meet the other — apostolic zeal lived through simplicity, integral care of the person summed up in his motto "Health for the body, peace for the soul," and a constant cultivation of interior life centered on the Eucharist, which allowed him to read his own exile not as punishment but as a path of deepening in God.
The talk likewise stressed his conscious belonging to the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts — far from any personalism — and a blunt temperament, at times rough in fraternal community life, which Eustaquio himself kept refining as part of his process of conversion.
Valeria Gomes closed her talk with a phrase attributed to Father Eustaquio himself, an expression of the total self-giving that marked his ministry: "I gave myself entirely to the people, and nothing is too heavy to do for them."
Afterward, there was time for dialogue and reflection on this religious figure, closing the block of witnesses we have been considering during this time in Belgium. July 15 is a travel day, from Monteagudo to Poitiers by bus. We thank the sscc sisters and brothers of Belgium for their welcome, especially our sister Hylde Reynders sscc, who has accompanied us during these four days on Belgian soil.
07/15/2026