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Creating a missionary Church in Australia

National

The agenda of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia calls those attending the Council assemblies to ‘develop concrete proposals to create a more missionary, Christ-centred Church in Australia’.

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The agenda’s preamble draws from Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, which explores the Pope’s dream of a ‘missionary option’.

“That is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the evangelisation of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation,” the Pope wrote.

Plenary Council president Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB said that invitation and exhortation to be a missionary people runs through the agenda.

“Through the Plenary Council, we are being called to consider how we can be a Church that goes out to the peripheries, that welcomes all into our communities and shows the face of Christ to the world,” Archbishop Costelloe said.

“So much of what we heard during the Council journey related to this concept of ‘conversion’ – personal conversion, communal conversion and institutional conversion – with an ever-deeper renewal in Christ.”

A total of 16 questions have been put forward under the six agenda themes:

Conversion

Structures

Institutions

Prayer

Formation

Governance

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