JUBILEE YEAR for the CENTENNIAL of BLESSED
ROMERO, 2016 — 2017
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The XXXVI
General Assembly of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM) will be held
in San Salvador, El Salvador from May 9 - 12, 2017 to honor the centenary of
the birth and the second anniversary of the beatification of Archbishop Oscar
Arnulfo Romero, per a CELAM press release. “The
Salvadoran, and the Central and Latin American Church, lives with joy the invaluable
testimony of the bishop who advocated for social justice, peace, human rights
and reconciliation,” reads the statement.
San Salvador Archbishop
Jose
Luis Escobar Alas expressed his pleasure to Super Martyrio, stating
that “we are very happy and grateful to
God and to CELAM because this will give greater honor to our beloved Archbishop
Romero.” Archbishop Escobar opened a Jubilee Year for the Romero Centenary during
the patronal feast of San Salvador in August of this year, which will end in
August 2017, on the actual centenary of the birth of the Salvadoran martyr who
was beatified by the Church in May 2015.
The XXXVI
General Assembly of CELAM has been in preparation since June, according to information
on the CELAM website. Rev. Rigoberto Perez Garrido, a spokesman for
the ecclesial body, told Super Martyrio that “The assembly to be held in San Salvador is
an assembly of coordination and work held by the CELAM, which will now have a special touch regarding the 100th anniversary of the birth of Archbishop Romero
as part of its content.”
Archbishop Escobar
explains that next year's session is a meeting of CELAM that convenes every two
years in different countries of Latin America. Super Martyrio has
compiled the following list of the venues of the meetings between 1995 and
2015:
·
XXXV
General Assembly
Dominican Republic, May 2015
·
XXXIV
General Assembly
Panama City, May 2013
·
XXXIII
General Assembly
Montevideo, Uruguay, May 2011
·
XXXII
General Assembly
Nicaragua, May 2009
·
XXXI
General Assembly
Havana, Cuba, July 2007
·
XXX
General Assembly
Lima, Peru, May 2005
·
XXIX
General Assembly
Tuparenda, Paraguay, 2003
·
XXVIII
General Assembly
Caracas, Venezuela, 2001
·
XXVII
General Assembly
Cumbaya, Ecuador, 1999
·
XXVI
General Assembly
Rio de Janeiro, 1997
·
XXV
General Assembly
Mexico City, 1995
In addition to
coinciding with the Romero centenary, the General Assembly to be held in San
Salvador will mark ten years since the historic continental conference in
Aparecida, Brazil in 2007, which was attended by Pope Benedict XVI and was
coordinated by the then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis. The
Aparecida document is regarded as a sort of manual for his pontificate. In fact, the original intention was to have
this 2017 meeting in Brazil, but given the Romero centenary, CELAM thought it appropriate
to celebrate the Aparecida anniversary in San Salvador.
Arguably, it
was in Aparecida that the beatification of Archbishop Romero gathered strength.
It was on the flight back from that conference that Benedict said he had no
doubt that Romero as a person merited beatification and, at the meeting,
Cardinal Bergoglio remarked off the record, “Were I the pope, the very first thing I would have done is to order the
beatification of Archbishop Romero.”
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