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How
the Synod Assembly came about
2. On
October 12, 1992, the very day marking the five hundredth anniversary of the
first evangelization of America, I spoke at the opening of the Fourth General
Assembly of the Latin American Bishops in Santo Domingo. With the aim of
broadening perspectives and giving impetus to the new evangelization, I
proposed a synodal meeting, “with a view to increased cooperation between the
different particular Churches”, so that together we might address, as part of
the new evangelization and as an expression of episcopal communion, “the
problems relating to justice and solidarity among all the nations of
America”.(3) The positive response to my suggestion from the Bishops'
Conferences of America enabled me to propose in my Apostolic Letter Tertio
Millennio Adveniente a synodal meeting “on the problems of the new
evangelization in both parts of the same continent, so different in origin and
history, and on issues of justice and of international economic relations, in
view of the enormous gap between North and South”.(4) This paved the
way for more immediate preparations, leading to the Special Assembly for
America of the Synod of Bishops, which was held in the Vatican from November 16
to December 12, 1997.
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