The Vatican has announced that a meeting to explore how the Church can reach out to the “peripheries” and fulfill its charitable mission will take place this July.
The Foundation “Populorum Progressio” for Latin America will hold its annual meeting in the Vatican from July 10-14.
Intended to offer an opportunity for reflection, the meeting will take as a starting point the Pope’s directions on the most effective ways to provide the service of charity as a “poor Church for the poor.” It will examine how the Church can fulfill her mission in the human and existential peripheries with particular attention to those most in need.
During the five-day meeting, the members of the managing board, which include senior Vatican officials and archbishops from around the world, will deliberate the financing of projects to assist indigenous, mestizo, African American and peasant populations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Funded by a total of more than $35 million dollars, the foundation, instituted in 1992 by John Paul II, has, so far, carried out some 4,000 projects. These projects are characterized by a participatory approach involving local communities and are directed at various sectors, such as agriculture and animal husbandry, crafts and cottage industries, infrastructure for drinking water, training and provisions for schools, healthcare, and construction.
The members of the board of the foundation, which was entrusted by John Paul II to the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum,” are Cardinal Robert Sarah, president ex officio of the foundation and president of this pontifical council; Archbishop Edmundo Luis Flavio Abastoflor Montero of La Paz, Bolivia, president of the managing board; Archbishop Antonio Arregui Yarza of Guayaquil, Ecuador, vice-president; Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, archbishop of Santo Domingo; Archbishop Oscar Urbina Ortega of Villavicencio, Colombia; Archbishop Murilo Sebastiao Ramos Krieger of Sao Salvador de Bahia, Brazil; Archbishop Javier Augusto de Rio Alba of Arequipa, Peru, and Msgr. Segundo Tejada Munoz, representative of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum.” (D.C.L.)
