A Filipina nun has been elected to the Religious of the Assumption’s general council, the highest governing body of the Paris-based congregation.
Sr. Lerma Victoria Pangantihon is one of the four new councilors who will help guide the congregation, along with Sr. Rekha Chennattu, who was reelected as superior general.
Pangantihon is the current provincial superior of the Assumption Sisters’ Asia Pacific Province, which has 17 communities in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan.
The other councilors are Sr. Sandra Elizabeth Duran Perez from the Central America-Cuba Province, Sr. Marthe Ntuyumve from the Rwanda-Chad Province, and Sr. Françoise Martin from the Province of France.
The election of the new general council took place as the Assumption Sisters gathered for their 30th general chapter in France.
They will lead the congregation, which now has missionaries from 14 provinces spreading across 33 countries in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
“These sisters assume the mission of moving along new paths of synodality for our time that the chapter is exploring,” the congregation said in a statement.
The Assumption Sisters came to the Philippines in 1892 and started a school for women teachers in Manila.
St. Marie Eugenie of Jesus, foundress of the Assumption, agreed to establish the congregation’s presence in the Philippines, seeing great potential for their mission