The 10th General Assembly of the Bishops'
Conference of Asia (FABC), scheduled from 11 to 16 December next, will
bring "a breath of fresh air" to the Vietnamese Church and all Catholics
in the country, says the Archbishop of Saigon, JB card Pham Minh Man.
The meeting will be held at the Pastoral Center of the Diocese of Xuan
Loc, in the south of Vietnam.
The closing ceremony is foreseen for Ho
Chi Minh City, with a concluding Mass - December 16th at the cathedral -
during which the final message and content of the five days of meetings
and discussions will be announced.
December 1, Benedict XVI sent a
letter to Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, Archbishop Emeritus of Manila,
Papal envoy to the FABC. In the text, the pontiff recalled the
fundamental theme of the "new evangelization" and proclaiming the
Gospel.
For the archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City the meeting will
be the "communion of bishops" in the region and an "opportunity" to
discuss, exchange experiences on pastoral activities and promote mutual
understanding.
The cardinal hopes hopes that "we will become more and
more brothers and sisters" in the name of a "common spirit" of mutual
aid in the context of current realities.
The10th meeting of the
Asian Catholic Bishops' Conference of the continent will be an
opportunity to "promote communion and proclamation of the Gospel", which
is why the bishops are calling the faithful to pray and support their
work.
Accompanying the papal delegate Card Rosales, there will also be
Msgr. Peter Nguyen Van Tai, Vietnamese and director general of Radio
Veritas Asia and Don Antonio Maralit, a Filipino priest.
In
preparation for the conference, the organizing committee within the FABC
has sent a draft of the main topics of discussion at the Council of
Asian bishops.
The Vietnamese delegation will be headed by Msgr. Paul
Bui Van Doc, of the diocese of My Tho. In preparation for the meeting,
organizers stress that they had received "all permits" from the
authorities, including "information on how to request an entry visa" for
118 participants from abroad.
All procedures confirms the Auxiliary
Bishop of Saigon, Peter Nguyen Van Kham, "went smoothly."
An aspect not
to be taken for granted, in a time when Hanoi appears to want to clamp
down on religions, further constraining on the practice of worship and
the movement of members of the clergy along the lines of the "Chinese
model."