Meeting together in Lisbon” “

On 27 and 28 February Comece (Commission of the Episcopates of the European Community) in collaboration with the Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar ( Sceam) will hold a colloquium in Lisbon with the title “Africa and the European Union: partners in solidarity”. The participants will include some 50 bishops from the two continents, representatives of the aid agencies linked with the Church (Caritas Europe, ICDS, Pax Christi), academics, politicians, and exponents of the mass media. Caritas Europe, Pax Christi and ICDS (International Cooperation for Development and Solidarity) are also due to hold a summit in Lisbon on 4-5 April on the theme: “From Cairo to Lisbon: EU and Africa working together for a new form of reciprocal aid”. The three bodies, in a statement put out to announce the meeting, declare that “the poverty and misery of Africa are no longer acceptable. The time has therefore come for Europe to assume her responsibilities and begin decisive action. Although Europe has taken some steps in the right direction, it must take a great many more now”. The two meetings are taking place shortly before the EU-sponsored (biennial) summit “EU-Africa” which will be held, again in Lisbon, on Saturday 5 April. In the executive programme of the EU Council itself for 2003, the Greek and Italian presidencies, after predicting that “relations between the EU and Africa will in general enjoy a revival”, add that probably “a number of situations of crisis and peace processes will require the Council’s attention, for example in the region of the Great Lakes, the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Eritrea/Ethiopia), the Sudan, Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe. These forthcoming meetings in the Portuguese capital will therefore be an occasion to evaluate EU aid for Africa, financed especially by the European Development Fund, and at the same time to examine the collaboration between the African and European Churches: possible points of contact will be sought, and new forms of collaboration planned, in both directions. The birth of Sceam (in Accra, Ghana), one of the most important “international talking shops” for the life of the African Church, goes back to Vatican Council II when the bishops of Africa and Madagascar considered it indispensable to coordinate their efforts more closely to offer a joint contribution to the Council itself. The Symposium began its activity in 1969 on the occasion of Paul VI’s first pastoral visit to Uganda. It is coordinated by a standing Committee composed of a President (the archbishop of Kisangani – Democratic Republic of Congo – Msgr. Monsengwo Pasinya), two vice-presidents and a member of each of the nine regional episcopal conferences that form part of it. Its Secretary is Father Peter Lwnaninda. After the special assembly of the Synod of Bishops for Africa (1994-95), SCEAM increasingly became a point of reference for the African Churches and this was also emphasized in the pastoral note published in 2001 “Christ is our peace. The Church as family of God, place and sacrament of pardon”. The Symposium’s plenary assembly, as John Paul II had said during the Jubilee, is “a privileged moment to confirm the option of the Church as family of God, particularly appropriate expression of the nature of the Church for Africa and for determining with greater precision her options for a pastoral ministry more attuned to people’s needs today.”