From July 18 to 21, 2024, in the city of Passos, diocese of Guaxupé, in the southwest of Minas Gerais, the IX Meeting of Christian Base Communities (CEBs) took place. About 500 leaders (lay, religious, deacons, priests, bishops) from all over the State of Minas Gerais attended. There was a strong youth presence.
When the Interchurch Meeting is held at the country level (the last one was in 2023), regional meetings are held in the following years. This was Minas, which constitutes the Eastern Regional 2 of the CNBB. It was an event that filled the soul with joy, with its dynamics of animation, songs, profound liturgies, reflections in plenary sessions and workshops, to strengthen citizenship, inspired by the Word of God and the rich experience of sisters and brothers on the way in the service of an outgoing, synodal, Samaritan and prophetic Church.
The theme was marked by the search for the four T’s: Land, Housing, Work and Technology for all. And the motto was the certainty that “God continues to cast down the mighty from their thrones and to exalt the lowly” (Luke 1:52). We reaffirm our baptismal commitment to solidarity, promotion and transformation of structures for an ecclesial communion that makes society fruitful. We pledged to remain resistant and resilient in the path of struggles for the maintenance and collective use of universal goods; for a popular agrarian reform; for a solidarity economy; for the maintenance of labor rights; to defend the broad rights of women, youth and excluded minorities.
We celebrate that the BECs, born shortly after the Second Vatican Council and in the context of the beginning of the military dictatorship in Brazil, want to renew themselves with a new theology and highlighting the permanent signs of their identity:
- Strengthen social movements, contributing to the formation of leaders in the social and political sphere.
- Improving the formation of lay leaders within the Church, seeking a greater protagonism of the laity in the area of ecclesiastical ministries.
- Contribution to a new way of reading the Bible and celebrating faith based on reality.
- Implementation of the broad movement to promote and restore ethics in the economy, in politics, in culture, in gender relations, in ecological relations.
Although this meeting was held in a small geographical space – only the State of Minas Gerais – we hope that this dynamic of being Church will be extended to all the places where our Vedruna Family is and where the Shepherding of our beloved Pope Francis is.
Sr. Virma Barion, CCV
