European Churches" "
Pastoral renewal, ecumenism and social mission: these are the three main priorities that the Athenian Church will have to tackle in the near future. The priorities were defined at the plenary assembly of the Athenian Church, which ended in the Greek capital in recent days. “The changing face of our local church said the archbishop of Athens and president of the Greek Episcopal Conference, Msgr. Nikolaos Foskolos, in a comment to SIR obliges us to reflect on the new situation to study what new guidelines we should follow. The organization of our diocesan church has remained anchored to the late Sixties. In addition, we have to come to terms with the fall in vocations and the rising average age of priests and religious”. Problems of a pastoral nature are added to these: “Our faithful explains the archbishop are Catholics of the diaspora. To grasp this, it’s enough to say that the number of foreign Catholics in our diocese is six times higher than that of Greek Catholics. This poses pastoral problems, as well as problems of mentality and language”. Nor should we ignore our ecumenical and social commitment in Greek society, “fields in which we have major difficulties. Being Catholics in Greece can often represent a source of discrimination. In spite of that, our greater involvement in social and political life can be expected, also through the work of many movements and organizations, such as Caritas, for example”. The assembly, which was attended by 180 delegates, 10 for each parish and linguistic community, representatives of the various groups and ecclesial movements, as well as priests and religious, was preceded by a preparatory process lasting a whole year. “It was an historic moment for our church concludes Msgr. Foscolos that has no precedent. It wasn’t a synod but a response to the invitation of the Pope, made in the Jubilee of 2000, to pastoral workers to trace a path for local churches”.
