CV NEWS FEED // The officers and members of the Episcopal Conferences of the Americas recently met for their annual summit, during which they spend time in prayer and discussion of their “shared ministry as pastors.”
According to a press release from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the February 26-28 retreat was attended by 12 bishops from El Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano y Caribeño (CELAM), the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), and the US.
The bishops released a joint statement following the retreat, sharing that in keeping with “a tradition of meeting that began in 1959,” the bishops had gathered to “spend time together in prayer, fraternity, listening, and sharing.”
“We talked about our mutual concerns and approaches to pastoral ministry and moral issues including euthanasia, migration, ecological threats to our common home, and the Synod,” the bishops continued, adding:
Pope Saint John Paul II said there was one American continent. In our time together, we see the wisdom in that statement. We share much in common and have similar pastoral and social concerns.
Our time together has strengthened our bonds of fraternity in Christ and has allowed us to discern ways we can promote a more synodal and missionary Church and work together even more effectively in the vineyard of the Lord.
In a photograph posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, the USCCB described the annual meeting as “an example of synodal collaboration that spans 50 years.”
As CatholicVote previously reported, the Church is now preparing for the Second Session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops that will cap off the “synodal process” in October 2024.
According to the synthesis report released at the conclusion of the October 2023 meeting, the guidelines for this year called on the Church to foster “the deepening of synodality in a missionary perspective and the broadening of experiences of synodality at the local level.”
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