WelCom June 2019:
Cardinal Tagel of the Philippines, re-elected president of Caritas Internationalis. Photo: Alvin Kasiban/Manila Bulletin
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila has been re-elected as president of Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of Catholic charities around the world.
The cardinal was confirmed for a second four-year term on 24 May, at the 21st Caritas general assembly in Rome.
The meeting, held every four years, brought together some 450 representatives of the confederation formed by 165 organisations. The delegates met to reflect on the past four years and to discuss and approve a new strategic framework for Caritas’ action plan for the coming four years.
The assembly was opened on May 23 with a Mass presided by Pope Francis at the St Peter’s Basilica and was concelebrated by Cardinal Tagle and other bishops. During the gathering, which ends 28 May, members will also elect a new general secretary, a new treasurer, and other officers.
This year’s assembly had the theme: ‘A single human family, a common home’. The theme shares Pope Francis’ belief we must hear ‘the cry of the poor and the cry of the Earth’. We must care for one another and for our planet.
‘We are driven by our collective belief that we are part of one human family, sharing one common home,’ said Cardinal Tagle.
‘The sheer number of displaced people, the spread of conflict and the environmental disaster which is becoming more and more evident, together threaten to overwhelm us – unless we urgently act together against these problems as one family with one home,’ he said.
Cardinal Tagle stressed that ‘the large number of displaced, the proliferation of conflicts and environmental disaster, increasingly evident, threaten to overwhelm us unless together we act urgently against these problems as a single human family with a common house.’
Guest speakers at the Assembly included José Graziano da Silva, director general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, and Cardinal Pedro Barreto, archbishop of Huancayo, Peru, and a leading light of REPAM, the Catholic Church’s network defending the rights of people living in the Amazon.
Caritas Internationalis
Zenit