Last week, from February 11-13, our Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington hosted the annual meeting of the leaders of the bishops’ conferences of Canada, the United States and CELAM (Latin American Episcopal Council). Once every three years they meet in the United States, and this year they chose our seminary. CELAM is the gathering of representatives of the 22 episcopal conferences of Latin America. Their leadership of nine bishops met with four bishops of the Canadian leadership and seven of the bishops of the United States. It was an honor for us to have them at our seminary, and I believe their presence at the seminary was good for our seminarians.

The topic for this meeting was “The Fifth General Assembly of CELAM” which was held in Aparecida, Brazil in May of last year. The focus of our attention was the final document of that meeting called the Aparecida document. The subject is discipleship and mission. It is in three parts. The first part deals with the challenges of the world today; the second speaks of the life of Jesus Christ in us as missionary disciples; and the third focuses on the life of Jesus Christ for all our peoples.

The meeting was a very positive and, in fact, uplifting one. The discussions that we held were placed in the context of daily prayer and the celebration of Mass. The conviviality and the sense of fraternity among the bishops were great gifts of the Holy Spirit. In fact, Archbishop Raymundo Damasceno of Aparecida, the president of CELAM, remarked to me that it reflected and echoed a sense of fraternity and joy in the Holy Spirit that was the hallmark of the meeting in Aparecida last year.

In our discussions, each conference had an opportunity to present a response to the Aparecida document. Archbishop Damasceno presented the document itself in our first session, which led to a very lively discussion about discipleship, mission and witness. It became clear that this text reflected the experience of the life of faith in Latin America with all of its richness and variety. But what became even more important was the focus on the person of Jesus Christ as the central reality and the great message of hope that is ours to proclaim. We have been formed in that message, and we are called to give witness to it as we live our lives in our communities and as we seek to share it with the world. There is a very clear connection between the spirit and the content of this document and that of Pope Paul VI’s great letter on evangelization, Evangelii Nuntiandi. These two documents are both rooted in the Second Vatican Council, particularly the documents on the Church, “The Church in the Modern World” and the document on missions.

Archbishop James Weisgerber of Winnipeg, Canada presented a reaction to the document on the part of the Canadian bishops. He concurred in the spirit of Aparecida and the value of the document. He raised some questions for discussion regarding the way the document approached globalization and evangelization. This led to a spirited discussion that allowed all of us to share insights and debate various points of the document.

In his presentation Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of our conference of bishops, also spent some time looking at the issue of globalization. He divided it into four areas: the challenge of globalization on the level of religion, on the level of culture, on the level of the economy and on the level of ecology. His was without doubt the most profound and stimulating of the reflections that we had. It gave us ample opportunity to deepen our own thought and to learn from one another.

In the last session, we turned our attention to a number of topics. We shared information about some of the major challenges that are going on currently here in our hemisphere. For example, the Archbishop of Merida, Venezuela gave us a very sober account of the tremendous challenges that the dictatorship of Hugo Chavez is posing to the life and future of his country of Venezuela. Those challenges are threatening not only for that country but for the neighboring countries, particularly Colombia and other parts of Latin America. Bishop Ignacio Gogorza of Paraguay informed us that Bishop Fernando Lugo, former Bishop of San Pedro, Paraguay, has proposed himself as a candidate for the presidency of the country. The reaction of the Holy See has been to suspend his episcopal faculties, but it raises a number of issues that are before the Church in Paraguay.

In Canada they are very concerned about the residential houses that were run for the original peoples of western Canada by the Catholic Church and other churches at the request of the government in the past. This has been a tremendous social and religious challenge to the Church in Canada. The United States bishops reflected on the impact of the sex abuse crisis of 2001-2002 and its aftermath on the churches here in the United States.

In addition, we had the opportunity to plan for the future. One of the most important things that has come out of the Aparecida document is a call for a continental mission. This would be an effort on the part of the 22 episcopal conferences in Latin America to have in each country a kind of country-wide mission retreat that would take the Aparecida document and make it an instrument to deepen the sense of discipleship among the peoples in Latin America. This would begin with a call to conversion, a renewal of one’s consciousness of being a disciple of Christ and a commitment to be missionary in our lives as witness to the world of the primacy of Christ and his message of life and love. The United States bishop participants found this to be a fascinating idea and one that we intend to bring to the wider body of bishops at the appropriate time.

We concluded our meeting by traveling down the road to St. Patrick’s parish in Huntington where Msgr. John Bennett graciously welcomed us. In the presence of parishioners of his parish and with the help of his extraordinary parish choir, we celebrated Mass which was televised by Telecare. This gave us an opportunity to take all of our work and prayer of the three days and offer them to the Lord in the Eucharist, so that strengthened by the Lord and filled with His spirit we might seek to serve our people in this one Church in this one continent of America.