CANADIAN BISHOP APOLOGIZES TO LATIN CHURCHES

      VATICAN (CWN) -- In a dramatic statement at the American Synod, Archbishop Marcel Gervais of Ottawa asked pardon from the churches of Latin America, in the name of the Canadian episcopal conference, for the "errors" committed in the past by Canadian missionaries in those countries. He said that Canada had taken more from the Latin American churches than it had given them.

      The Synod continued with interventions from the individual bishops participating in the discussions. Today's morning session is set aside for meetings of the various linguistic groups. These groups, each of which will have 25 participants, include 6 groups speaking Spanish and 3 speaking English, with one apiece speaking French, Italian, and Portuguese. The full plenary sessions of the Synod, with the continuation of individual bishops' addresses, resumed this afternoon.

      If there was a common theme in the many different presentations by individual bishops, it was the desire to coordinate efforts across the boundaries of the countries of the New World. Cardinal Anthony Bevilaqua of Philadelphia, for instance, emphasized that all of the greatest challenges facing the Church-- the drug culture, the disintegration of family life, the poverty of religious education, the rise of sects) require a new "continental" approach. He also observed that since by the year 2050 it is estimated that nearly one-quarter of the US population will speak Spanish, it behooves North Americans to work together with the Latin countries. He advanced the possibility that inter-American episcopal conferences might be set up to help in that process.

Acknowledgment: