On Friday 16 March, during the 34th ordinary assembly of the Slovene Bishops’ Conference (CES), the bishops elected as their new President the Right Rev. Alojz Uran, Metropolitan Archbishop of Ljubljana, who has served as Vice-President of the CES since 6 December 2004. Archbishop Uran takes the place of Franc Kramberger, Metropolitan Archbishop of Maribor. “In my five-year term as President of the CES I will devote myself in the first place to strengthening communion not only among the bishops and dioceses of the Slovene Church, but also with the Holy See and the other Bishops’ Conferences of Europe”, said the new President in his speech of acceptance. He also hopes for “closer collaboration with the civil institutions”. “My attention will be devoted in particular to a vigilant discernment of the signs of the time in our Slovene society and in today’s globalized world – added Uran -. It will be one of my concerns to promote the new evangelization, which demands the personal commitment of a witness of life lived in conformity with the Gospel. The Law of Religious Freedom, recently approved in the Republic of Slovenia, represents a good point of departure to pursue the negotiations on still unresolved questions in Church-State relations in Slovenia. I am convinced – he concluded – that the new dioceses, which have already put in place their organizational structure, and the new bishops, who have drawn up and launched their pastoral projects, represent a great richness for the whole Church and new lifeblood to re-invigorate pastoral life at the local and national level”.
