Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Guatemala City (Fides) – During the Day dedicated to Oceania, Friday 28 November , CAM2 recalled also the 160th anniversary of Missionary Childhood , we were told by Fides correspondent Rev. Victor Livori. At morning prayer the Gospel passage was proclaimed in Sutui, a language spoken in Oceania. A group of Missionary Childhood children presented Cardinal Sepe and the other Cardinals and Bishops present a Missionary Childhood scarf. At the end of the prayer a hundred children distributed Missionary Rosary beads to the participants with a commitment to Marian and missionary prayer.
While adults take part in the Congress some 280 Missionary Childhood from various Latin American countries are taking part in a special Meeting. The aim is animation and integration of children of different cultures to coordinate missionary activity at the continental level. A little girl from Argentina Eliana Solagle Greco, told Fides that she was very happy to be at the Meeting, “because with our baptism we are all missionaries and we must make Jesus known to children who still do not know him”.
Today CAM 2 participants listened to a talk by Bishop Francois Lapierre of Saint-Hyacinthe, Canada, on Mission and Present Day Challenges. One challenge is globalisation which makes everything a question of trade and money so that the rich in our world are ever richer and the poor ever poorer , the Bishop of Saint-Hyacinthe said. Other challenges mentioned included international debts “which kill… while we ask to live”; unemployment, underemployment migration from south the north in search of a better life; trafficking of drugs produced in the south and abused in the north (“religion used to be called the opium of the people, today opium is the religion of the people”). By way of conclusion the Bishop said that the many problems cannot be solved it we look at them with a provincial mentality: the challenge is to make room for dialogue and communications between the Churches of North and South and in this way to consolidate better relations.
The second conference “Being Missionaries ad gentes in the 21st Century”, was given by Bishop Victorino Girardi, of Tilaràn, Costa Rica, who stressed that Mission ad Gentes is not an apostolate: Mission ad Gentes is still an unsolved problem in Latin America, “we have received many missionaries who renounced everything to proclaim the Gospel in these lands and we still have not responded with generosity from our poverty”. The Bishop said that one particular field to be evangelised today is the world of politics and politicians in view of building a more just and human economic world order.
At the end of the conference Cardinal Sepe read a passage from a letter, the author was not disclosed, calling on CAM2 participants to commit themselves to go to a mission land (five parishes of a diocese which are abandoned).
In the afternoon while the participants gathered in work shops to discuss assigned themes, Cardinal Sepe, Papal Envoy, visited sick and elderly people and encouraged them to offer their suffering for the missions. “I know I find here in this moving meeting, a great spiritual treasure for the good of the missions. You offer your sufferings for the mission, a marvellous richness! What a great spiritual treasure for the missions!” Cardinal Sepe said. Mentioning the two patrons of the missions St Francis Xavier and Saint Therese of Lisieux, Cardinal Sepe said that some missionaries follow in the footsteps of Saint Francis but many others “can have the privilege of following in the footsteps of Saint Therese, because for various reasons that cannot physically carry the Gospel to other peoples and cultures”. “The Church relies on you, brothers and sisters who suffer, to give a great witness of faith – the Cardinal said -. The missionary Church finds in you the strength to live and realise the salvation which Christ, with his death and resurrection, won for all the men and women of the world. In your weakness you are a source of strength and live for the Church and for humanity”.(S.L.) (Fides Service 29/11/2003; lines 55; words 778)
