CCEE, a year’s work” “

The presidents of the 34 Bishops’ Conferences that form part of the CCEE, the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe, are meeting at Sarajevo from 3 to 6 October. The Council’s annual plenary assembly will tackle two fundamental questions: evangelization and the relation between Church and “public reality”. Vocations and collaboration between parishes and ecclesial movements are some of the central issues of the “evangelization” question. The presidents will also reflect on the situation of the ecumenical process with particular reference to relations between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Another urgent problem to be tackled is dialogue between Christianity and Islam after 11 September 2001. As for the relations between Church and European “political” life, the bishops will continue their reflection on the Church’s participation in the process of European unification and in the work of the Convention on the future of Europe, devoting particular attention to the prospects of the so-called “candidate” countries. The following presidents of the bishops’ conferences will (among others) be present at Sarajevo: Cardinal Camillo Ruini (Italy), Cardinal Karl Lehmann (Germany), Msgr. Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz (Russia), Msgr. Jean-Pierre Ricard (France) and Cardinal Christoph Schönborn (Austria). Intensive activity. The bishops have already been informed of the intensive activity of the CCEE over the past year. Its various priorities have included dialogue with Islam, the safeguard of the creation, the vocational apostolate, ecumenism and the promotion of the Charta Oecumenica for Europe, immigration and pastoral care in the universities. In September 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the USA, the joint CCEE-KEK (Conference of the Churches of Europe) Committee organized an Islamo-Christian congress in Sarajevo which ended with a declaration of unanimous condemnation of “every act of violence”. Another important moment for the CCEE was the 10th Symposium of European Bishops, held in Rome from 24 to 28 April, on “Youth of Europe in a period of change. Laboratory of faith”. Some 100 bishops and 35 young delegates participated in the symposium together, for the first time. Another area of interest has been that of environmental issues. Over 60 delegates from 22 countries participated in the consultation on responsibility for the creation held in Venice from 23 to 26 May; its guiding principle was the relation between the conception of work and responsibility for the creation. As far as ecumenical dialogue is concerned, a consultation on the Charta Oecumenica was held at Ottmaring (Germany) from 7 to 10 September. Organized jointly with KEK, it was attended by 50 delegates, representing 26 countries and 15 different Churches and ecclesial communities. Vocations and the young. The European Churches are particularly focusing attention on vocations and the young, “privileged place for grasping the signs of a new phase of evangelization and the inculturation of Christianity in our continent”. Some data: vocations are declining in all the countries of Europe. The statistics show that almost half of all candidates to the priesthood in Europe come from Poland and Italy. The European bishops are reflecting on the causes of such great disparities and on what measures should be taken to address it in future. “The lifestyles of European youth – says Bishop Alois Kothgasser of Innsbruck – seem increasingly divorced from the Church’s evangelical teachings. Before a young person comes to opt in any radical fashion for the form of life proposed by the Gospel, the road is long”. It was just on the world of the young that the Symposium of European bishops focused in April this year. “It’s no longer the time – says Msgr. Aldo Giordano, CCEE general secretary – to conduct analyses of sociological type on young people. Instead we need to create places where the young can experience the Church and communion and become protagonists themselves”. “The time has come – adds Giordano – for Christianity and the personal meeting with Jesus to be re-proposed. A new generation is emerging that is open to this return to what is essential and seems to be little interested in debates and attitudes that were all the fashion a few years ago. A generation is emerging that is less ideologically conditioned, more disoriented but also more conscious of the value of truth”.