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The greatly anticipated "Ecclesial Assembly of Latin America and the Caribbean" gets underway at the famed Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico
By Xavier Le Normand | Mexico
The Church in Latin America has opened a weeklong summit that is being seen as an important laboratory for the practice of synodality, a participatory process that Pope Francis is trying to make constitutive for Catholicism throughout the world.
It's called the Ecclesial Assembly of Latin America and Caribbean and it got underway on Sunday with a festive Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
Different from the various conferences of CELAM (Latin American Episcopal Council), this November 21-28 assembly is not limited to bishops, but is open to priests, men and women religious and lay Catholics.
This week's assembly comes 15 years after the "Aparecida Conference", the fifth major CELAM conference that took place in Brazil.
That 2007 gathering was guided by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentine Jesuit who is now pope.
Responding to the rise of evangelicals
A vast listening phase was carried out in the various countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean to prepare for this week's assembly. Organizers said upwards of 60,000 people participated "directly" in the listening phase, far more than were expected.
Catholics were able to express themselves through workshops held throughout the region.
Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodriguez Maradiaga SDB of Honduras last month revealed the main themes that came to the fore during the listening phase.
They included violence, corruption, impunity and actions of the political class that do not correspond to the needs of the communities.
"These realities are experienced to varying degrees in our countries, and they are part of our daily lives," emphasized the 88-year-old cardinal, one of the pope's key aides.
The ecclesial assembly also comes just three years after the Synod of Bishops held a special gathering in Rome on the Amazonian Region.
Like that 2018 meeting, this week's gathering will also have to face a silent but omnipresent question: how to respond to the seemingly inexorable rise of Evangelicals in many Latin American countries?
Catholics and Evangelicals are now on an equal footing in several countries in Central America.
The process for producing a final document
The assembly will take place in a mixed way, between remote participation and "face-to-face" gatherings at the headquarters of the Episcopal Conference of Mexico next to the Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine.
Large delegations from the different countries -- 36 people from Venezuela, 30 from Chile and 54 from Peru -- will meet for a program of speeches, testimonies and work groups.
As in the case of the Synod of Bishops, there will be a weeklong process to gather and synthesize the conclusions.
The objective is to arrive at a conclusive document by next Saturday.
This text will then serve as a reference point for evangelization by Latin American Catholics, at least for the next decade.
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