AMERICA/BOLIVIA - Commitment to the defense of life, family, democracy: a Church which "goes forth"

Monday, 16 October 2017 missionary animation   missionary institutes   missionaries   evangelization   human rights   politics   family  

Sucre (Agenzia Fides) – To commit oneself in order to intervene more decisively in defense of the lives of the most vulnerable, against human trafficking, migration and the danger of losing democracy: is the goal expressed by more than 1,500 people who participated in the VII National Missionary Congress held in Sucre. As Fides learns, Bishops, priests and lay faithful, attended the assembly entitled "The Gospel is Joy, Proclaim it!". The VII Missionary Congress allowed Bolivian Catholics to "analyze their prophetic responsibility in society, in the family, in politics, and in all areas where we need the presence of the Gospel of Jesus", reads the note sent to Fides by a local source.
In the conclusions, read yesterday at the closing ceremony at the auditorium of the Sagrado Corazon school, the participants learned that there is "a weak testimony and a passiveness in front of events and new laws that depenalize and promote abortion, impose the gender ideology that is contrary to the natural identity of the person, and affects the family and society".
Strengthened by the Gospel and the Holy Spirit, after five days of meeting, the missionaries concluded that the Bolivian Catholic Church should be more involved in the fight against human trafficking, for the protection of victims and must face the problem of migration from the countryside to the city with greater strength.
The prophetic mission should encourage missionaries to be present in social organizations, neighborhood councils, trade unions, universities, even at a political level, especially for the defense of life and human rights. Likewise greater attention is needed towards the family, for situations of abandonment, separation and divorce.
On Friday, October 13, during the Mass concelebrated by several Bishops and priests in Plaza 25 de Mayo, the President of the Bolivian Bishops' Conference, His Exc. Mgr. Ricardo Centellas, invited everyone to become a "Church which goes forth" to go out into the street to meet children, young people, workers, migrants and peasant communities, and present them the Gospel of Jesus as a response to government attempts to impose a culture of death. He then denounced the manipulation of life by ideological and economic interests that contradict the life and do not respect human rights. Mgr. Centellas asked "not to allow division to be stronger than the union of families, parishes and Bolivian homeland. We are apostles of unity!".
He then continued: "We cannot allow populism to gradually become dictatorships in our society, we cannot allow it to kill TIPNIS (Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory).
Therefore, before this culture of death, in the spirit of Jesus, we must say that you will not defeat us".
After thanking the organizers for the success of such a big meeting, the Archbishop of Sucre, Mgr. Jesús Juárez, recalled "the need to fulfill these tasks as missionaries, in preparation for the Fifth American Missionary Congress that will take place in Santa Cruz in a few months". (CE) (Agenzia Fides, 16/10/2017)


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