Forty years of history

In the framework of the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) that will culminate with a conference in Rome on November 22 on Europe and the New Evangelization, followed, the next day, by the Papal audience at the end of the general audience, SIR Europe presents a fact-sheet on the history CCEE.The birth. The spirit and the experience of the Second Vatican Council, that enabled all bishops to live an intense experience of dialogue and encounter, gave birth to the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, conceived as an area for the continuation of the debate and the encounter on urgent themes of pastoral care in Europe, an area to live collegiality with greater concreteness. Roger Etchegaray, who at the time served as the Secretary General of the French Bishops’ Conference, drew up, in the last weeks of the Council, “a simple note to institute pastoral cooperation amongst the bishops’ conferences of Europe”. Those few paragraphs encompassed the idea of “the constitution of an Episcopal Commission, consisting of a delegate from each Conference” with the task “of following in a special way the modalities of cooperation (…) and the promotion of common quests”. The intention was thus not “to set up a superstructure, nor a burdensome body”, but rather to introduce the experience of “mutual support” within the perspective of the universal Church and “in the framework of post-Council organisms”. Thirteen presidents of the European Bishops’ Conferences present at Vatican II, on November 18 1965, thus decided to set up a Secretariat for promoting liaising, chaired by Etchegaray, and a Committee made up of six delegates of the Bishops’ Conference whose task was to promote ongoing dialogue and cooperation. The Committee first met in July 1967 at a symposium in Noordwijkerhout (Netherlands), attended by bishops from over 20 East and West-European countries, for a joint reflection on post-Vatican II diocesan bodies. Activities. Following the approval and the encouragement of Paul VI, CCEE was officially established in March 1971 in Rome, with the approval of the “directive norms”. It saw the participation of 17 representatives of Bishops’ Conferences, under the presidency of Etchegaray, who in the meantime had been appointed bishop of Marseilles. Despite the yearning and the intention to prevent overburdens, the activities intensified, and after a new Symposium in Rome in 1975 on the Mission of the Bishop committed in the Service of Faith, it was decided to proceed with the regular publication of a brief annuary, with the scheduling of annual meetings of the Secretaries of Bishops’ Conferences, the appointment of Bishops in charge of the laity, catechesis and priests, and ecumenism. CCEE promoted annual meetings since the onset in the framework of a joint Committee with the Conference of European Churches (KEK). From 1978 onwards the cooperation extended, to include European meetings and well-known assemblies (Basilea, Graz, Sibiu), the mixed committee for relations with Islam in Europe, and numerous large-scale initiatives. In the meantime, in 1977 the decree of the Congregation for the Bishops approved CCEE. John Paul II, who had always welcomed CCEE initiatives, in a letter to the Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences in 1986 underlined “the serious, urgent problems hovering on the Christian future of Europe, their increasingly international dimension, the changed social context in which the Church lives, prompt us to appreciate the work that the ‘Council’ has carried out until now, and encourage their activity, with the hope that it will increase”. Thus it wasn’t a surprise that in 1991 His Holiness asked “that the members be the same presidents of the respective Bishops’ Conferences” to give more authoritativeness to the body, which was to be introduced with the new statute in 1995. Over that period CCEE has promoted a wide range of initiatives. These include catechesis, pastoral of the university, vocations, protection of the Creation, mass media, migrations, interreligious dialogue, the Balkans and South-East Europe, European unification, Africa and the relations with SECAM and other continental bodies, the symposiums on major themes linked to evangelization and the previously mentioned ecumenical assemblies such as the Charta Oecumenica.Pastoral cooperation. All of these realms offer an area of pastoral cooperation whereby European bishops over the past 40 years have found ways and opportunities of encounter. This would not have been possible without those people who concretely guided CCEE (the presidents have been figures of the stature of Card. Roger Etchegaray, Basil Hume, Carlo Maria Martini, Miloslav Vlk, Msgr. Amédée Grab and presently the Hungarian cardinal Peter Erdo, at his second mandate), or those who conducted the works from the pulsating heart of the secretariat: Rev. Alois Sustar (1971-1977), archbishop of Ljubjana; Rev. Ivo Fürer (1977-1995), then bishop of St. Gallen, supported for a certain period by the French rev. Paul Huot-Pleuroux; Msgr. Aldo Giordano (1995-2008) now envoy of the Holy See at the Council of Europe, and today Fr Duarte da Cunha. After 40 years, 38 member bishops attend the CCEE plenary, representing 33 Bishops’ Conferences in Europe, along with the archbishops of Luxembourg, Munich, Cyprus of the Maronites, the bishop of Chisinau (Moldavia) and the eparchial bishop of Mukachevo.