Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Chiang-Mai (Fides Service) - A Meeting for Italian Fidei Donum priests on mission in Asia and Oceania started yesterday 6 March in Chiang-Mai, Thailand. The meeting is part of initiatives to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pope Pius XII’s Encyclical Fidei Donum (21 April 1957). The meeting, organised by the Italian Bishops’ Office for Missionary Cooperation, follows a previous gathering for Italian Fidei Donum priests in Latin America (30 January/3 February 2006) and will be completed with a similar meeting for Africa in November. The meeting consists of an analysis of the history of evangelisation in Asia and Oceania, the presentation of the missionary journey of the Church in Italy and proposals to give new impulse to this sort of missionary service. The meeting will close on 10 March. It is being held at Chiang Mai a small tourist village close to the airport and is co-ordinated by the Fidei Donum of the Triveneto region of Italy operating in this part of Thailand.
The area of Asia and Oceania was the last to open to the reality of the service of Fidei Donum missionaries and therefore their number is still small 26. In the late 1990s the dioceses in Triveneto assumed missionary responsibility at the regional level in Thailand. Also present at the meeting in Chiang-Mai the president of the Italian Bishops’ Commission for Missionary Cooperation Bishop Luigi Bressan; the vice director of the Bishops’ office for missionary cooperation among Churches Mgr Giuseppe Pellegrini and Rev. Amedeo Cristino, of the Asia-Oceania sector of the Centro Unitario Missionario CUM. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 7/3/2006 - Righe 21; Parole 263)
