A meeting of representatives of the 8 Episcopal Conferences, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Hungary, that organized the MEKT, the Katholikentag of Mitteleuropa on 22-23 May 2004, is to be held in Bratislava, in Slovakia, on 25-26 October. Decided on 8 January 2002, the MEKT, which culminated in the “pilgrimage of peoples” to Mariazell, in Austria, was prepared with collateral events, symposia and meetings, and was marked by the presence of 80,000 pilgrims from all over the area. The aim of the meeting in Bratislava, explained Msgr. ANDREJ SAJE, general secretary and spokesman of the Slovene bishops, who is due to the participate in it, “is to review the achievements of MEKT and verify the possibilities of ‘exporting’ or rather enlarging the experience to other countries and plan future common work. The main concern of the episcopates is to reinvigorate the action and responsibility of Christians in the enlarged Europe (5 countries that helped organize the MEKT, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, in fact entered the European Union on 1st May this year), starting out from their presence in public life and in the various spheres of civil society; and revive the Christian presence to help remove the burden of Communism that imprisoned us for decades. Now that a new world is being opened up to us, we need to revalue our action as Christians to give positive answers to the questions of those who are seeking for something important”.
