Cardinal Soane Patita Mafi, the Bishop of Tonga, has thanked Pope Francis for being “a true spiritual Father and a sincere model of a Good Shepherd, for all of us in the Church.”
He was one of the Synod Fathers who spoke on the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Synod of Bishops.
Cardinal Mafi is the youngest member of the College of Cardinals.
He spoke of the contribution of the Synod of Bishops to “the life and mission of the Church in Oceania.”
Mafi noted that when Pope Paul VI convened the first Synod of Bishops in 1965, “I was probably reciting the rosary at my home in Tonga, following my dear parents in their regular family prayers.”
“We were probably praying during those times for the success of Vatican II Council.”
“I was just an innocent young four-year old kid then. I had never dreamt that 50 years later I will be sitting right here in this beautiful Paul VI Hall with the Holy Father and with you all my dear brothers and sisters. It is truly a humbling experience.”
Mafi said that as a result of Pope Paul’s vision “a few of our bishops gathered together in that post-conciliar spirit and envisioned the creation of what had become today the four Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania.”
In 1974 The Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of the Pacific, and New Zealand, were formed.
In 1979 the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference was established.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands came into being in 1983.
“As each Conference continued to grow in strength and maturity, all finally joined together on the 28th of July, 1992, in the formation of what it is now called the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania or the F.C.B.C.O., in short.”
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Additional readingNews category: Asia Pacific.
