We enter the last week of work of the General Conference promoted on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the FABC, the Federation of Episcopal Conferences of the Asian continent. At the close of the event, a message addressed to the people of God will be broadcast. On this occasion, bishops from mainland China are not participating. Cardinal Gracias: “We miss them, but we feel they are part of our journey.”
Bangkok () – “The time has come for our Asian Churches to make their contribution to the universal Church, especially in matters such as interreligious dialogue, which for us is part of everyday life”.
Since October 12, the General Conference promoted by the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC). Bishops, priests and lay delegates from 29 countries today began their last week of work in this meeting that will conclude on Sunday, October 30. They began to reflect on some new ways of responding as a Church to the great emerging realities of Asia today. The lines of action will be summarized in a final message, addressed to the People of God -which will be released next weekend- and in a pastoral plan to be drafted in the coming months.
However, it will not be a word addressed only to the Churches of Asia. This was revealed this afternoon at a press conference by the three presidents of this General Conference: Cardinal Charles Bo of Rangoon, president of the FABC, Card. Oswald Gracias, responsible for organizing this event, and the Cardinal of Bangkok, Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovitvanit. Indeed, words are emerging in the debate that are meaningful to Churches around the world. “Many of our Churches are young”, says Card. Thank you, “but you still have meaningful experiences to offer. For us -for example- dialogue with other religions is a challenge that we have always lived and perhaps we can be of help to the Churches of Europe or the United States that today question their forms. But I also think of the reflection that the Churches of Korea and Japan have carried out on a subject as current and as important as “peace and reconciliation”.
Youth is another topic that is being talked about a lot at the General Conference in Bangkok. Young people “are part and protagonists of our evangelizing mission,” said Card. Bo. If we want to change Asia today, we can only start from the youth, going where the youth are. Therefore, the challenges of new languages and digital communication are a challenge for us”. In this sense, a new tool to bring young people closer to the Bible, which was presented on the sidelines of the conference, is very significant: a volume which contains QR codes through which the reader reaches video clips in which some people talk about passages from the Bible in relation to their own lives.The project was made possible thanks to the collaboration of Cardinal John Dew, of Wellington, New Zealand, and John Bergin, consultant to the United Bible Societies and the FABC Office of Evangelism.
Referring to this topic, Card. Kovitvanit said during the press conference: “yesterday we had another experience of this kind on World Mission Sunday.” “Thanks to digital tools, the delegates present in Bangkok were able to “virtually meet” with 20 parishes from all over Asia. In small groups, they visited, among others, the parishes of Bombay, Dhaka, Seoul, Lahore, Yogyakarta, Pathein, Sabah, but also Darkhan, in Mongolia, and others in Taiwan, Brunei, Laos, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan and the Philippines. The visit began with an introduction and a video of the parish, followed by a conversation with the assembled delegates.
However, in this gaze that encompassed all of Asia, there was an empty place: that of the Catholic communities living in the People’s Republic of China. asked whether or not there were ways to encourage the participation of bishops from mainland China, and Card. Thank you replied that this time it was not possible. “We had extended an invitation,” he explained, “but the difficulties related to the pandemic prevented their participation (the Conference was to be held in 2020, but it was postponed until today, ndr). However, as you will remember – added the Archbishop of Bombay – two Chinese bishops have already participated in the Synod of Rome and also in the Theological Congress organized in recent years by the FABC. On this occasion, we miss them, we notice their absence. But anyway, we feel that they are part of our path.”
