Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Bogota (Agenzia Fides) – After two days of intense workshops, the Annual Meeting for the CELAM Coordination Committee ended on July 23. The event brought together members of the leadership council and Bishops heading up other departments and its purpose was to evaluate the past year and plan for the coming year. The meeting was presided by Archbishop Raymundo Damasceno Assis of Aparecida, President of CELAM, and was attended by 40 Bishops and 10 executive secretaries. The focus of the talks were the reports on the activities that have taken place since the last assembly held in Havana, July 2007. All the reports mentioned the application in terms of Aparecida, as the four-year plan had mentioned. After the reports, the departments made an evaluation and planned more programs for future realization.
The planning included the Continental Mission, which will begin August 17, with the celebration of the “sending” that will occur in Quito, at the Closing Ceremony of the Third American Missionary Congress (CAM 3). During the celebration of the Plenary, the Bishops observed the need for all the projects to center on the Continental Mission. The next coordination meeting will take place in July 2009, in Bogota, the headquarters of the General Secretariat of CELAM.
During this meeting, on the 24th, there was a special celebration in honor of the 40th anniversary of the II General Conference in Medellin, which took place in 1968. The events began with a Mass of Thanksgiving in the Cathedral of Bogota, presided by Archbishop Raymundo Damasceno Assis, President of CELAM. The homily was given by Archbishop Alberto Giraldo Jaramillo of Medellin, who recalled some of the pastoral and social guidelines that had been mentioned by Pope Paul VI at the inauguration of the Medellin Conference and that were still valuable today, 40 years later.
Later, there was an academic activity in the Colombian Bishops’ Secretariat, on the “Present-Day Application of Medellin in the Latin American/Caribbean Church and its Influence on Aparecida,” given by Fr. Alvaro Cadavid Duque, who explained what had taken place in the II General Conference and later mentioned some of the central points from Medellin that were later taken up in the following General Conferences of Puebla, Santo Domingo, and Aparecida). He also explained how Medellin had defined the specific physiognomy of Latin American theology. Lastly, he enumerated the aspects that Aparecida has taken from the Medellin Final Documents.
Later on, there were more talks on “Medellin as an application of Vatican II” by Archbishop Baltasar Porras Cardozo of Merida (Venezuela); “Medellin in the Social-Ecclesial Context” by Fr. Sergio Bernal Restrepo, SJ and “Medellin and its Pastoral Consequences” by Fr. Alberto Ramírez Zuluaga.
This act formally inaugurated the 40th anniversary celebrations that will continue into the month of August, with activities planned by the Archbishop’s Office in Medellin, as well as events planned by the Universities of Javier in Bogota and the Bolivariana in Medellin. (RG) (Agenzia Fides 25/7/2008)
