'austraLasia' #113

SUPERIOR GENERAL ASKS: NEW COUNCIL FOR THIRD MILLENIUM?

by Vatican Correspondent

VATICAN CITY: 25th November -- In a brave and passioante plea, the

Superior General of the MSCs (Missionaries of the Sacred Heart), who are

widely represented throughout Australia, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati,

Fiji and other Pacific Islands, called upon the Pope and the Synodal

Fathers in Rome to consider an Ecumenical Council for the beginning of

the Third Millenium 'to deal directly and effectively with issues of

Church order and Government". Fr. Michael Curran MSC, an invited

participant at the Synod for Oceania, listed the following questions as

"urgent" for the Church to solve:

What services do we need in Rome for the evangelisation of the third

millenium?

What areas of responsibility might be taken over by local churches,

episcopal conferences or patriarchal sees?

How is ordained ministry to be exercised and by whom, in the third

millenium?

His questions are finding a regular echo in the synodal interventions as

Bishops and other participants call, for example, for "genuine trust in

the ability of the Bishops' Conferences to judge the authenticity of

translations in their own languages, and to judge the

appropriateness of minor adaptations for their regions" (Bishop

Cullinane, Palmerston North, New Zealand)

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