Worsening realities in Oceania shows need for continued dialogue

Worsening realities in Oceania show need for continued dialogue

Monday, November 28th, 2022

It is vital that the bishops who meet next February as the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania (FCBCO) are fully briefed, says Wellington Archdiocese Vicar General, Mons. Gerard Burns.

Burns describes his involvement in helping prepare the FCBCO conference as very much “in the background”, but that one of the FCBCO’s main themes is caring for the earth and sea.

He says the worsening realities for Oceania are real and cannot be overlooked.

One Papua New Guinean woman who spoke out at COP27 was Ursula Rakova.

She castigated the industrialised nations that still refuse to limit fossil fuel use.

While she welcomed the agreement reached at COP27 on loss and damage funding, she says she’s “not confident … industrialised nations will want to give money to loss and damage while … continuing to extract fossil fuels.

“Because if they really want to save the earth, especially these smaller islands in the Pacific and around the globe, they will have to walk their talk.”

Like Rakova, many FCBCO members live with the realities of major changes affecting our common ocean home. They want change, but progress is slow.

FCBCO member countries include American Samoa, Cook Islands, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Marian Island, Papua New Guinea, Western Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, and expert contributors to the conference from Fiji, Tonga, Niue and Australia.

The FCBCO bishops will meet in Suva next February – they meet only once every four years.

The recent earthquakes that devastated parts of Indonesia and Solomon Islands should be a wake-up call for all leaders, says FCBCO president Archbishop Peter Loy Chong.

To provide the bishops with some extra information and perspective about the sea theme, a preparatory online event has been organised with the Australian Catholic University.

Chong, who is also Archbishop of Fiji, will give the welcome address at next week’s online event and says he remains “deeply concerned about the worsening realities for people to recover from natural disasters in our region.”

He hopes the preparatory online event will generate insights and recommendations from the peripheries for the FCBCO Assembly to consider in February 2023.

The FCBCO meeting will be the first time in 16 years that Pacific Island nations will have the opportunity to host a group of experts along with often marginalised Pacific voices.

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