(ANS – Port moresby) -  The EAO set of Mission Study Days is by now a past event - concluding on 25 August with the Oceania group (Australia, Melanesia, Polynesia) in Port Moresby. The challenge ahead now for the SDB and FMA Missions Teams (and for other Salesian Family Groups who will join them) is the one month preparation session in Rome, then in Piedmont, for the next annual (142nd) mission send-off, in September.

The Mission Study Days, which began in Sampran, Thailand, and concluded in Port Moresby, PNG, focused on 'first proclamation' of the Gospel, and what it means in local contexts. The same theme is being repeated throughout the continents. This deeper, contextual approach seeks to identify the real challenges and also note new insights and perspectives arising from practice.

The situation for initial proclamation in Oceania is vastly different than that for East Asia - and indeed within 'Oceania', which includes at least Australia and New Zealand, Melanesia and Polynesia, the situation is again a varying one. These differences were reflected in the contents, contributions and responses of participants at the Oceania meeting. Perhaps the one similarity between East Asia and Oceania was the value of storytelling as a way of visualising proclamation in practice.

The Oceania group was helped by a number of scholarly and practical reflections by experts in the field - such as the talk by Fr Franco Zocca on initial proclamation within the Melanesian (and specifically PNG) context; Fr David WIllis OP reflecting on rapid secularisation especially in societies (again largely in the Melanesian context) where people have moved from Stone Age to Digital Age over a relatively short period of time; Fr Elio Capra SDB, an expert from Australia on the Catechumenal model; Fr John Cabrido SDB who looked at the situation in the Melanesian context.  But there were no lack of questions and reflections either on the situation for Polynesia. One of the very real questions in a part of the world which adopted Christianity almost totally, but less than 200 years ago, and with the exception of Fiji, has very few non-Christians, is what precisely 'first proclamation' could mean in such a context.

Despite the fact that there are always more questions than there are answers, the Oceania group has drawn up a synthesis of insights based on 4 Cs: Context, Culture, Community, Christ, with some ideas relating also to post-initial proclamation (based on the same themes).

Published 31/08/2011