Intervention of Mons. Giorgio BERTIN, Bishop of Djibouti (DJIBOUTI)
The “goods to share” I wish to refer to in order to reinforce our witness of the Gospel
and announce it to the Muslims are ‘priests”. There could be emergency situation as
in the Church that I represent, where there are no “real” priests or all of a sudden
there are not enough of them. Why then, at the level of the Middle East or of the
whole Church, not “share” the priests we have? This could be a development and an
adaptation to modern scenarios of the “Fidei donum” and could also provide a “shot
in the arm” both to the Churches of the Middle East and the other Churches to live
and develop their missionary dimension. I therefore propose the creation of a “bank
of available priests”; that is to say, that from all the Churches and religious congregations
a number of priests should make themselves available for a set time: 3 months, 6 months,
9 months. They could offer their services, taking it is a sort of sabbatical or as
a sacrifice made with generosity in favor of a Church or a group of Catholics who
request the presence of priests to keep them in their faith and bear witness to it
with humility and courage. This would be a concrete way of living the “communion”
between our Churches. We could even call this “bank of priests” “priests without frontiers”
because they are ready to be sent and welcomed in a very short period of time. For
this reason perhaps a coordination office should be set up.