From Canção Nova News Room and Vatican Radio
The Church on the American Continent. This is the theme of the International Congress, The Church in America, that ended Wednesday the twelfth of December in the Vatican. The event was open officially on the 9th with the Eucharistic celebration presided over by the President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Cardinal Marc Ouellet.
In his homily, The Cardinal underlined that the Church feels the need of a spiritual union with the people of the American Continent. “On the threshold of the Third Christian Millennium and in a moment in which many ideological barriers and borders fall, the Church feels absolutely the duty of uniting spiritual with the people of the this great continent and also moved by religious mission that is proper to her, impels the spirit of solidarity among all.
The Cardinal affirmed that the profetic vision of Blessed John Paul II is going to be a motivation in order that in advent in this year, there may be a search for a deeper communion and solidarity among the particular Churches of America.
He stressed the need of the Church in American to have to resume the appeal of the 1999 synod, resumed by the universal Church in the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization, realized in October of this year. This is an appeal to conversion and profound communion and concrete solidarity and creativity between the North and the South of the Continent.
This congress was especially put under the protection of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, Star of the New Evangelization. We trust to Mary our needs and projects of the New Evangelization, with a certainty of which she will drive us to a safe harbor, to joy her son promised to the poor.”
The objective of the congress is to commemorate the 15 years of the Apostolic Exhortation to the Church in America of Blessed John Paul II. The event is promoted by the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, the Knights of Columbus and the Superior Institute of Gualupana Studies.
translated from Portuguese