Salta (Fides Service ) – With the motto “Church of Salta, your life is mission”, the archdiocese of Salta in Argentina will hold its 3rd Mission Congress from 10 to 12 October in preparation for the 2nd all American Missionary Congress CAM 2 which will take place in November this year in Guatamala City, Guatemala.
The main goal of the archdiocesan congress is to “revive missionary awareness and activity in the Church in Salta, by increasing the missionary spirit among the people of God that they may bear witness to their faith in Christ responding to his command and to the pastoral challenges of today.”. Specific objectives indicated include: promotion of projects and initiatives with a missionary dimension; promotion of a universal spirit of mission increasing awareness that mission is a task for the whole Church; engage in concrete missionary commitments “beyond the frontiers”; increase awareness of the need to know and love the person and mission of Jesus Christ and to grow constantly in the experience and witness of the faith ; promote missionary formation among the different communities and knowledge of the Pontifical Mission Societies as tools of mission.
The working paper prepared by the organising commission presents a series of themes in line with those which will be discussed at CAM2 and with the pastoral programme of Salta archdiocese: “Our encounter with the living Jesus Christ”; “The Church, Mystery of communion for mission”; The Church’s missionary activity”; “We are all missionaries”; “Mission, life of the parish community ”.
The Church in Salta first became aware of its missionary responsibility in 1991, when the first national meeting for Missionary Groups was held in Posadas (Province of Misiones - Argentina). It was after this event that the archdiocese began to organise missionary pastoral with the young members of the Missionary Groups and later children and adolescents of Missionary Childhood. The Church in Salta held its 1st missionary congress in 1995 and the second 1999. Now it is about to hold the 3rd missionary congress which is part of the archdiocese’s three year pastoral plan 2003-2005. (R.G.) ( Fides Service 2/9/2003, lines 26 – words 343)