Catholic bishops in Asia are working on a pastoral plan for the Church in Asia, taking into consideration the emerging so-cial, economic, religious and po-litical realities on a continent whe-re Christians are a minority.
“What exactly is the reality? How should the Church respond? What priority should we have in the next few years? What should the churches in Asia do? We are in the process of identifying and trying to open ourselves to under-stand these priorities and to see what is the way forward. We want to commit ourselves, the bishops of Asia, to work for a better Asia,” said Cardinal Os-wald Gracias.
“We will present a message to the peoples of Asia and also begin the elements of a final docu-ment which will be like a guide document, a pastoral plan for the Church of Asia,” said the Indian cardinal.
He was among three Asian cardinals, including the president of the Federation of Asian Bi-shops’ Conference (FABC) gene-ral conference, who addressed the press on Oct 24 to help sum up the last 12 days of their meet-ing. Some 20 Cardinals, 120 Bi-shops, 37 priests, eight nuns, and 41 laypeople from 29 coun-tries are taking part in that confe-rence.