Three members of the Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard in Lourdes: Father Gérard, Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager and Cordula Lennkh


Father Gérard met Roberto Lerario, a historian of the Order of Malta


2 May 2009: Official handover of a vehicle by the Rotary Club of Stanger:
"An important project for Blessed Gérard’s Care Centre (BGCC) and members of the greater Mandeni community is HAART (Highly Active Anti Retroviral Treatment). This project offers anyone in the community the opportunity to know their HIV status by doing Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT). For HIV positive people, we then provide an ARV readiness course, before putting patients on ARV treatment (HAART). To ensure that the treatment is effective, we send out two therapeutic counsellors to visit all HAART patients in their homes every month, to provide support with any problems and issues. We call this adherence monitoring, which makes our program particularly effective. The risk of ARV treatment is that if patients do not take their medication every day as prescribed, then the treatment will not be effective. Our HAART program is offered free of charge, and we rely on donors for funding.   As we have almost 200 patients on our HAART program, there was a need for a second vehicle. As some of the homes in the community are difficult to reach, a 4x4 is a necessity. Fortunately, a Rotarian from Neuburg Germany, Mr. Peter Wiedemann, donated money for the purchase of this vehicle. Rotary International then agreed to a matching grant. The Rotary Club of Kwa Dukuza Stanger agreed to act as a partner club to channel the grant to us. The final piece in the puzzle was the support from Provincial Motors to provide a vehicle which satisfied all our requirements. The culmination of all the hard work was that on Saturday, 2 May 2009, Rotary handed over a new home care vehicle for Blessed Gérard’s HAART program to our therapeutic councillor, Mr Sihle Dube. Present at the hand-over ceremony were from the left: L Moodliar (Rotary), F Dumisa (Provincial Motors), T Pillay (Rotary), S Dube (Blessed Gérard’s Care Centre), S Lalbahadur (Rotary), Fr. S Titus  (Blessed Gérard’s Care Centre)"


17 May 2009: Annual General Meeting of our German Support Association the "Bruderschaft des Seligen Gerhard e.V." at Neuburg/Germany

21 May 2009: Dedicated Members' Meeting of the Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard.


21 - 23 May 2009: Father Gérard takes part at retreats of the "Gebetsgemeinschaft Johannes der Täufer" at Ehreshoven/Germany. Their chapel is dedicated to Blessed Gérard and they have a relic of Blessed Gérard underneath the altar.

23 May 2009: 15 years Blessed Gérard's AIDS Education Programme

23 May 2009: Nampak donated R100,000.00 to Blessed Gerard's Care Centre. We are deeply grateful.


23 - 24 May 2009: Father Gérard preached part of their annual retreat to the Subpriory of Blessed Clement of the Order of Malta at Ehreshoven/Germany.