Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Montevideo (Agenzia Fides) - About 75 participants took part in Uruguay's 1st Mission Symposium held in Kolping on theme "All the Churches for all the World" . The Synposium was organised by the Mission Commission of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Uruguay CEU and the national offices of the Pontifical Mission Societies Fr. José David Palumbo PMS National Director said in a report to Fides. The participants included besides six bishops, pastoral delegates, secretaries of CEU commissions, priests, religious and lay men and women.
In his address the president of the CEU Missions Commission Bishop Orlando Romero Cabrera recalled that the Symposium, held on 27 August, was organised in the framework of the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Fidei Donum encyclical by Pius XII "to foster cooperation among the Churches at the service of mission; the Great Continental Mission called by the 5th General Conference of the Council of Bishops' Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean in Aparecida to give new missionary spirit and impulse to every community on the continent;
and thirdly as part of preparations for the 3rd American Mission Congress CAM 3 in Quito, Ecuador in August next year.
Referring to the Symposium Bishop Cabrera said that the intention was “to accompany and form diocesan mission animators for popular missions and mission groups in schools of all grades who lead missions in cities and rural areas during the holidays. The Symposium was proposed by the CEU Missions Commission and the PMS in Uruguay as an opportunity for bishops, clergy, missiologists, diocesan mission animators, formators, catechists to share experience and ideas, present studies in the mission of the Church, unite criteria for intensifying mission spirituality ".
Bishop Carlos Collazzi of the diocese of Mercedes, and Bishop Francisco Barbosa of the diocese of Minas, both participants at 5th General Conference of the Council of Bishops' Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean in Aparecida, shared their experience with the Symposium participants. The central theme for reflection "Elements of the new emerging paradigm of Mission in the Aparecida Document" was illustrated by Chilean missiologist, Fr. Roberto Mosher
Speaking at the conclusion of the Symposium Bishop Romero Cabrera, said “it has encouraged us to reflect and to locate mission as something central to the life and activity of the local Church, to rediscover mission as the essential nucleus or first and ultimate reason for the Church's presence in the world". The Bishop recalled "only if missionaries are contemplative can they announce Christ convincingly. Missionaries are witnesses of the experience of God " and in this sense "mission is fundamentally a question of heart, rather than strategies and structures". (RG) (Agenzia Fides 20/9/2007; righe 35, parole 451)
