EUROPE/ITALY - European National Directors Pontifical Mission Societies discuss missionary pastoral on the old continent

Friday, 10 March 2006

Palermo (Fides Service) - A Meeting of national Pontifical Mission Societies offices and Offices for missionary cooperation in Europe opens today 10 March at S. Giovanni Battista Comvent in Baida, Palermo, Italy. These European meetings are organised by national offices in turn. This one is organised by the Italian national PMS office. The programme is arranged on the basis of suggestions and requests from the various national representatives.
The opening prayer will be led by Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, Archbishop of Palermo. The introduction will be given by Mgr Giuseppe Andreozzi PMS national director and head of the Italian Bishops’ office for missionary cooperation who will also give a brief report on the meeting held last year in Spain. At 6.30pm Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo - former Archbishop of Palermo - will preside a concelebration of Mass which will close the first day of the meeting.
On Saturday 11 March the first session will be devoted to the 50th anniversary of the Fidei Donum Encyclical (1957-2007) with a conference by Fr Vito Del Prete, Secretary General of the Pontifical Missionary Union. This will be followed by a report on the experience of a PMS delegation of 150 young PMS members from 50 different countries at the 2005 World Youth Day in Germany. In the afternoon the meeting will focus on how to give new impulse to the Pontifical Mission Societies programmes with a talk by Netherlands national PMS director Fr. Ben Pex. In the evening they will visits Palermo Cathedral and have a meeting with the parish community of San Gaetano-Maria SS.ma del Divino Amore, in one of the poorest and most problematic districts of Palermo where the parish priest Fr Pino Puglisi, was assassinated by the Mafia in 1993. Taking part in the meeting, which will end on 14 March are PMS national directors and missionary cooperation directors from France, England-Wales, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Island, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Italy, Holland, Poland, Czech Republic, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rumania. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 10/3/2006, righe 29, parole 386)


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