Almost from the beginning of my life as a Dominican, life and work took me abroad. This has made for a particular formation journey that has involved at times following it online, and not just because of the pandemic.

It has also meant that I have been able to encounter Dominicans in other provinces and to see how we are all Dominican behind the expected local particularities of each culture. A beautiful experience that has helped me recognise in myself my own Dominican calling and to witness the unity of the broader Dominican family first hand.

This past summer brought special joy as I travelled mainly through German-speaking countries and was able there not just to share some time with German and Austrian Dominicans but while attending a conference met brothers and sisters from the Netherlands, France (via Cairo), Canada, Italy, and Germany. As per tradition, one I learnt about at the European Academy of Religion Conference in Vienna, when Dominicans meet at a conference, they all take a photo together. It surprised us all how many Dominicans were present at the Conference in Vienna without any sort of planning on our part.

The conference even counted with three Dominican heavy panels, one of them dedicated to the English Province. Prior to this I had been to a Thomistic Institute summer school in Regensburg Germany. While there a German student brother, who had just been to Blackfriars Oxford, and I were invited one morning to mass and breakfast with the contemplative sisters at the nearby Dominican convent. This involved, due to our lack of organisation and slight lateness, bumping into the celebrating priest as we guessed our way into the convent, who led us into the chapel via a series of tunnels and steps all the way to the sacristy. To our surprise it was a private mass in their chapel and breakfast in the guest room with about 10 of the sisters. We were having so much fun! We were then late to the first of the talks of the day, but such is life.

Marystella Ramirez

Autumn 2025