AMERICA/ARGENTINA - President of the Episcopal Conference: Mission is a priority

Buenos Aires (Agenzia Fides) - The Argentine Church faces a number of challenges in the years to come. This was confirmed by the President of the Argentine Bishops' Conference (CEA), Bishop Oscar Ojea of San Isidro after his re-election in November. In this context, Bishop Gishop Ojea named his priorities: Pope Francis' invitation to mission, which he formulated in the Apostolic Exhortation in Evangelii Gaudium; the Synod convened by Pope Francis; accompanying the Church's social Magisterium; the protection of life; dealing with abuse in the church; and the gender ideology. Bishop Ojea illustrates his priorities in three video clips. "The first challenge is missionary, and is illustrated by the Pope in Evangelii gaudium his programmatic letter, which says: 'I dream of a missionary option capable of transforming everything' (EG 27). The Church serves to this one purpose, to evangelize. The immediate context of the pandemic has left deep traces of anger, sadness, disappointment and fear. All of these splinters that the pandemic has left, cannot be properly assessed after such a short time.
Today the missionary commitment of our church is confronted with this reality and this context". For the President of the Episcopal Conference, the first missionary activity is listening: "Every mission begins with my listening to those to whom I will speak. Together with all the people of God who are evangelizing, we must make this profound pastoral and missionary conversion, which we owe to the Church". With a view to the Synod of Bishops convened by Pope Francis, which is currently in the diocesan phase, Bishop Ojea emphasizes: "The Church goes out to listen to everyone in a world of deaf ears in which each group listens to its own speech. There are different reactions and fears to the Synod's proposal".
As President of the Bishops' Conference, Monsignor Ojea said that some media "do not hesitate to attack the church with disinformation, slander and defamation and to try to drive it out of the public space" and finally complained: "There is also a religious fundamentalism that does not respect the freedom of others and feeds forms of intolerance and violence that yearn for a Church to exercise power". (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 10/12/2021)

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