Until Wednesday, September 16th, over forty Bishops of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences gathered in Galilee will discuss the challenges facing the Church in Europe, while on a pilgrimage-meeting that will guide their meditation on the person of Jesus in various shrines of Galilee, in Jerusalem and Bethlehem of Palestine.
Opening the meeting, on September 11th, Cardinal Peter Erdő, president of the CCEE, explained that the assembly has come to meet in the Holy Land in order to "rediscover the source of our identity as the people of God and of our mission as successors of the apostles, sent to bear witness about the encounter with the face of the Father's mercy, which is Jesus himself."
Then, the Italian Bishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto read the message sent to the European episcopate by Pope Francis, who has entrusted to their prayers "the next General Synod, so that the Church may respond ever more rapidly and generously to the needs of the family."
The Pope said that he hoped that "time spent together" will above all be "a special time of prayer and solidarity" and that their "rest in the Lord," may revive the freshness of the Gospel, from which "new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world"(Evangelii Gaudium, 11).
Read Pope Francis' entire message:
