On October 13, participants in the first session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops turned their attention to the third topic of conversation: “Co-responsibility in Mission: How can we better share gifts and tasks in the service of the Gospel?” (module B2).
In 2007, the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean completed their fifth general conference with a final report, known from the Brazilian city where they met as the Aparecida Document. Its principal authors included Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJ, then the archbishop of Buenos Aires. Thanks to the efforts of the future pope and others, the Aparecida Document remains an exemplary description of what it means to be the Church of the New Evangelization and not only in Latin America. Paragraph 436 of the Aparecida Document is of particular interest in the United States today:
We hope that legislators, heads of government, and health professionals, conscious of the dignity of human life and of the rootedness of the family in our peoples, will defend and protect it from the abominable crimes of abortion and euthanasia; that is their responsibility.. We must adhere to eucharistic coherence, that is, be conscious that they [i.e., legislators, heads of government, and health p