A word from the President

My Brethren,

It is with real happiness that it pleases me, in my capacity as President of our organization, to address you on the website of the Universal Masonic Confederation "Hope and Humanity".

I received this President's gavel with humility and gravity. It is a charge. A responsibility before you, before those who preceded us, and before God, the Great Architect of the Universe, the Great Source.

You were kind enough to grant me your confidence at our last General Assembly in the East of Libreville, during our proceedings held at the Palais des Congrès Omar BONGO ONDIMBA.

On behalf of the Brethren of the Grande Loge Tradition et Spiritualité du Gabon, and of Gabon, I want to thank you for the opportunity you offer us to work toward the promotion of our Confederation and the ideals it promotes.

I want here to express all our gratitude for this confidence and to tell you that, as a man of duty and obligation, we will accomplish our task. This duty is that of holding the course when the wind turns; it is the duty of protecting all the obediences and jurisdictions and the Brethren of the Confederation, the duty of recalling the meaning, the spirit and the objectives that animate us when they are forgotten.

I therefore measure with humility the weight of this charge, to which is mingled this spiritual and mystical dimension, in order to lead our organization toward the third way of the regular obediences of tradition in the world.

This is the place also to thank and to pay a vibrant tribute to TRF Mario PIROMALLI, Past Grand Master of the Grande Loge Traditionnelle de France, and 1st President of our Confederation, whose personal contribution to the influence of our organization will have marked minds and Brethren alike. It is thanks to him principally, and to the Grande Loge Traditionnelle de France, that all of this was made possible.

Serving Masonic TRADITION is our duty; serving REGULARITY and its principles, building together an ideal of Peace, Love, Fraternity and Beneficence remains our principal objective. And that is why we must commit ourselves to putting them into practice through CHARITY in a world subjected to materialism and chaos.

We must in particular ensure that we maintain moral and material ties within the Universal Masonic Confederation and toward all Masons of the world and their family.

We must furthermore share, for the exercise of their beneficence and the conception of their actions, the model type of an immaterial building site where each one, in their place, contributes to the production of a Work to the glory of God and in the service of a Universal Fraternity, without any spirit of appropriation of the whole or of its parts, always attentive to its safeguarding and its protection for the happiness of humanity.

To accomplish this mission, I will not lead the destinies of our Organization alone, but, to recall it here, I will have myself assisted by several Vice-Presidents, notably the representatives of each international Geographic zone, and by 3 co-opted administrators, notably a Secretary General in charge of relations and exchanges, and a Treasurer General responsible for the proper keeping of the Confederation's treasury.

The Executive Board is composed of:

• a Grand Master in charge of Hospitality, of the operating procedures for reception, and of the solutions to be provided to the Brethren,
• a Grand Master in charge of leading the Youth commission,
• a Grand Master in charge of communication matters,
• a Grand Master in charge of the chancellery and of relations with other Obediences or Masonic powers wishing to join the Confederation,
• a Grand Master in charge of the Twinning of Lodges within the Confederation. On this subject, a procedure has moreover been put in place by the Brother referent of this commission.

In recalling the foundations of our organization through its Statute, we propose a true operational board of the Confederation; as an executive body, it organizes and implements the realization of the decisions taken by our Board of Directors.

We will also, over the course of this mandate that you entrust to us:

• Make concrete the database of our hospitallers and bring about a directory available to the Brethren in the world,
• Foster Treaties of Friendship between our obediences and jurisdictions and bring about the twinnings of Lodges,
• Identify the acts of beneficence and the causes to be funded on the different continents,
• Strengthen the rapprochement of our Confederation with others for the concrete materialization of the third way of the regular obediences in the world, and, generally speaking, it must be recalled, we must initiate meetings with other Confederations because of our common attachment to the principles of Regular Freemasonry of Tradition, Initiation and Spirituality,
• Ensure our communication by finalizing the launch of our website,
• Etc…

My Brethren, I cannot conclude my remarks without evoking God.

Indeed, in evoking Him, we attempt, for the space of an instant, to enter into resonance with the Great Architect of the Universe. In doing so, we do not oblige ourselves to honor a personalized divine entity but to bear witness to the reverent admiration that the Mystery of Creation at work in the world inspires in Him.

In dedicating our Works to Him, we manifest our intention to devote ourselves, with and through the Rites that we practice, to the realization of the ideals that are inspired in us by the Spirit.

In fact, we realize, through the teachings that we receive, that the universe is ordered and that all the energies that participate in its ordering are complementary and interact with this higher consciousness to which we all wish to connect ourselves.

For us Masons, the recognition of the existence of God at work in the Universe signals His double divine nature: one arising from the universal Being from which He proceeds, and the other human, subjecting His acts to the sole determination of our conscience as free men.

My Brethren, in order to attain Charity, and greater commitment toward our fellow beings, the splendor of our Rites lies in the fact that they subject us to a doctrine that leads us step by step, and according to its method, toward perfection.

This methodical process, at once ascensional and progressive, is almost unavoidable for the spiritualization of the initiate. It suggests to us, indeed, through work, to attain levels of consciousness that are ever higher, such that on our building site this process harmonizes or destroys within us, degree after degree, our convictions, our certainties, our emotions, our doubts, our fears and our rules of conduct, so as to tend toward sublimation.

In saying this, all our Brethren here present are ready to fight for God and our rights; they are now ready to inflict vengeance upon the traitors to humanity through charity, because the hour of the deliverance of peoples and of the regeneration of man will henceforth be accomplished through the transmission of knowledge, by helping the Brethren around us and with us to attain inner harmony for the good of humanity.

For this, I form a simple wish that our website be the reflection of our activities, in the image of a temple under construction, which remains a dynamic place where one can speak truly, seek rightly, and be mistaken without being judged. A place where Masonic TRADITION is lived.

I have said

TRF Brice Edgard PONGA