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The Oceania region’s Catholic bishops have finished their week-long assembly in Fiji on a high note.
“It has been a great joy for the bishops to gather this week to pray for and consider their shared mission as the Chief Shepherds of the region,” the concluding statement from the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania (FCBCO) says.
Federation members meet every four years. They come from bishops conferences in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea/Solomon Islands and many other islands of the south-west Pacific.
This year, they were invited to imagine a “theology of the Pacific”, that would allow the Church in the region to speak with a voice and a faith that is “distinctive”.
That discernment was supported by theological input from Oceania-based theologians on the Assembly’s themes: Care for the Oceans; Formation for Mission; and Becoming a More Synodal Church.
Finding the Pacific voices
Commenting on the Assembly, Brisbane’s Archbishop Mark Coleridge noted there is a slowly emerging “distinctively Pacific voice or symphony of voices”.
“You don’t get one voice in the Pacific; you get many voices,” he said.
“But we are looking for and waiting for a distinctively Pacific symphony of theological voices, because the theology in this part of the world is based upon a different set of facts than in other parts of the world. It’s not just Western theology that has been exported.”
Finding that symphony of voices was part of this year’s Assembly’s aims.
It involved “listening to each other so that together we can speak with a distinctive voice and speak to the whole Church right around the world,” Coleridge said.
“But at the heart of that, there is the theological enterprise, applying reason to faith in a way that does justice to the experience of the peoples of the Pacific.”
Caring for the oceans
The bishops say their discussions on the ocean ranged from the impact of rising sea levels and extractive industries, to proper care for oceans.
“In our region, the ecological crisis is an existential threat for our people and communities,” and it is manifested in different ways, including rising sea levels, the acidification of the oceans, droughts, floods and “more frequent and more extreme weather events”.
For this reason, they said a so-called “ecological conversion (is) an urgent mission priority not only for us, but also for the whole Church”.
Synodality
Becoming a more synodal Church and formation for mission were important concerns in all the Oceania Conferences.
In this respect the Assembly’s concluding statement notes:
“Oceania is home to some of the world’s youngest local churches and also the oldest continuing culture in the world.
“We appreciate the complexity of the contemporary world … While being young may entail vulnerabilities, it also offers freshness and vitality.”
The statement also acknowledges, “the youngest churches in our region have lessons to teach the more established churches about synodality and about maintaining the freshness of the encounter of the Gospel with local cultures and societies.”
The next FCBCO assembly will be in Australia in 2027.
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