AMERICA/ECUADOR - In a New Year Message Bishops' Conference President urges the people to be members of an “active, faithful and credible Church” to make the nation “an example of reconciliation, justice and peace”

Quito (Agenzia Fides) - In a new year message the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Ecuador Bishop Néstor Herrera Heredia, called on the people to be members of “an active, faithful credible Church”, in these times of “change, with the whole of humanity seeking new paths of progress and a new route to follow”.
A Church “in which we are convinced and happy Christians, disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ, members of active communities which grow in faith and promote missionary activity by means of a mature laity which shares the mission to announce and render visible the Kingdom of God ” said Bishop Herrera Heredia.
The President of the Bishops' Conference thinks of the poor and calls on the people to “make an even greater effort this year 2008 to be close to the poor as the Gospel teaches”; to help young people in their formation, in their search for an identity, vocation and mission; to give courageous new impulse to pastoral care for the family for life and to show respect and esteem for indigenous peoples and Afro-Americans families and peoples. In this way, according to the Bishop of Machala, Catholics can help the nation of Ecuador “become an example of reconciliation, justice and peace”. (RG) (Agenzia Fides 7/1/2008; righe 14, parole 202)