CHURCHES IN BRIEF" "
CCEE: in Malta to speak of migrations They will go to Malta to visit centres for asylum-seekers and discuss “Pastoral care of migrants and refugees between integration and inclusion”. The bishops and the directors of national bishops’ conferences in Europe with responsibility for migration will take part in the meeting organized by the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) from December 2-4 in La Vallette. Participants will visit two centres for asylum-seekers to verify the situation in person. In the opening session of 3 December a panel of speakers, including inter alia, Msgr. Charles Scicluna, Auxiliary Bishop of Malta, card. Antonio Maria Vegliò, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care Migrants and Itinerant People, card. Josip Bozanic, Archbishop of Zagreb and coordinator of the migration section of the “Caritas in Veritate Commission” of CCEE, will address the issue. At the round table will take the floor Msgr. Alfred Vella, Director of the Commission “Malta emigrants”, Msgr. Giancarlo Perego, director of the Foundation Migrantes and Cecilia Taylor-Camara, of the English Bishops’ Conference. The evening Mass will be officiated by Msgr. Aldo Cavalli, Apostolic Nuncio to Malta and Libya. On the final day there will be a session on migration policies in the modern world (Rojas Jose Angel Oropeza, director IOM office for the Mediterranean) and on the “unresolved paradoxes of the European story” (Laura Zanfrini, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart). COMECE: security and peace in the EU project To the theme of “Security in Europe” will be dedicated the third conference of the cycle “Europe, politics and beyond”, due to be held in Brussels December 3 on the initiative of the secretariat of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE). The Archbishop of Vilnius Gintaras Grusas (Lithuania), former military ordinary of the Baltic Republic, will deliver the keynote speech. The speaker is tasked with “exploring the peaceful dimension of the European project”, the organizers explain. “The end of the Cold War and the threat of terrorism have radically changed the European thought on the theme of defense and security. While European integration progresses and international power balances change, a new reflection is perhaps necessary as relates to issues bound to security”. With this series of lectures COMECE intends to address a number of topical issues of the European Union ahead of the elections to be held in May 2014. The first two conferences were devoted to the themes of the common good and migration. The next meeting will take place on January 7 and will focus on the family in the twenty-first century. For more information: www.comece.org. Portugal: “active” involvement of the Roma Catholic coordinators of the diocesan Secretariat for the Pastoral care of the Roma in Lisbon addressed a public appeal to step up the involvement of Portuguese population in “citizenship building”. During the 40th national meeting, held during the week-end in Afragides, in the suburbs of the Lusitan capital, all participants highlighted the efforts made by the Church in the achievement of this result: “The participation of the Roma in the structures, initiatives and programs for social inclusion is absolutely necessary, as well as their visible and concrete involvement in citizenship building”, states the final document. National representatives of the pastoral care of the Roma argue that, however, further proposals for liturgical ceremonies that include people of this ethnic group, and that adapt to their culture are missing. “The Church’s friendship with them, and the long and arduous journey made in their midst has built up considerable expertise that is scarcely disseminated by the means of social communication, and still insufficiently implemented by pastoral organizations at local level”. In the final remarks of the programmatic document participants in the national meeting call upon all dioceses that have not yet implemented activities with the Roma to “reflect on the need to promote specific pastoral care for these communities, the majority of which live on the outskirts of society and of the Church”.
