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In
the context of the new evangelization
6. With
an eye to the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, I was keen that there should be a
Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for each of the five continents: after
the Assembly for Africa (1994), America (1997), Asia (1998) and most recently
Oceania (1998), in 1999 there will be, with the Lord's help, a Special Assembly
for Europe. This will make possible an Ordinary General Assembly during the Jubilee
year, to identify the rich insights which have come from the continental
Assemblies and synthesize the conclusions to be drawn from them. That will be
possible because similar concerns and points of interest have emerged from all
the Synods. In this regard, referring to this series of Synodal Assemblies, I
noted how “the theme underlying them all is evangelization, or rather the
new evangelization, the foundations of which were laid down in the
Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi of Pope Paul VI”.(6)
And so, in both my initial proposal to hold this Special Assembly of the Synod,
and later in announcing the Synod itself, and after the Bishops' Conferences of
America had agreed to the idea, I suggested that the Assembly's deliberations
should address “the area of the new evangelization”,( 7) and the
problems emerging from it.( 8)
This
concern was all the more prominent, given that I myself had outlined an initial
program for a new evangelization on American soil. As the Church throughout
America prepared to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of the first
evangelization of the continent, when speaking to the Council of Latin American
Bishops in Port-au-Prince (Haiti), I had said: “The commemoration of the five
hundred years of evangelization will achieve its full meaning if it becomes a
commitment by you the Bishops, together with your priests and people, a
commitment not to a re-evangelization but to a new evangelization — new in
ardor, methods and expression”.( 9) Later, I invited the whole Church
to respond to this call, although the program of evangelization, embracing
today's world in all its diversity, must take different shape in the light of
two quite different situations: on the one hand, the situation of countries
strongly affected by secularization, and, on the other, the situation of
countries where there are still “many vital traditions of piety and popular
forms of Christian religiosity”.( 10) There is no doubt that in varying
degrees both these situations are present in different countries or, better
perhaps, in different groups within the various countries of the American
continent.
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