Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of the Diocese of San Carlos in Negros Occidental challenged world Church leaders to celebrate the beauty and pain of liturgies and its connectedness to the ongoing struggle for social justice during a conference in Assisi, Italy, Friday and Saturday, March 15 to 16.
Alminaza was one of the 250 Church leaders who attended the “The Feast of Creation and the Mystery of Creation: Ecumenism, Theology, Liturgy, and Signs of the Times in Dialogue” in the Christian churches.
He was part of the ecumenical panel on the topic “The genesis and blossoming of the Feast of Creation”, representing the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines.
Alminaza cited in his presentation the prophetic leadership role of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) in promoting Creation Day or the Feast of Creation since 2003, being the first Catholic Bishops’ conference to endorse it and anticipating by many years what Pope Francis would later establish in 2015.
Alminaza made a challenge to the participants by quoting the CBCP 2003 Pastoral Letter that said “We urge… that our different liturgies celebrate the beauty and pain of our world, our connectedness to the natural world and the ongoing struggle for social justice”.
“Amid ecological destruction, and situations of injustice in the Philippines, we are a people of hope and we are consistently ready to protect and defend nature and people… this is the way we celebrate creation… we connect to the cry of the earth, and the cry of the poor”, he said.
During the prayer service at the conference Alminaza also presented the icon of the “Reyna sang Paghidaet” as a pilgrimage initiative for the promotion of peace and the end of the ongoing militarization in the island of Negros.
The conference participants prayed with him the Prayer For Peace of the icon, which drew the interest and concern of the participants on the continuing displacement of the local communities in the parish of Dian-ay on Negros Island.
The Filipino chaplaincy at the Basilica of Santa Pudenziana in Rome also hosted the icon during their Sunday celebration of the Eucharist with Alminaza as presider.
The two-day conference in Assisi, Italy was co-organized by the Laudato Si’ Center of Assisi and the Laudato Si’ Research Institute of the University of Oxford and was attended by almost 250 church leaders, theologians, liturgists, and ecumenists from the different Christian churches.*