Last November, CELAM (the Episcopal Conference of Latin America) held the First Ecclesial Assembly of Latin America and the Caribbean.

It was one of the six most significant gatherings in CELAM’s history, following the five general conferences in Rio de Janeiro (1955), Medellín (1968), Puebla (1979), Santo Domingo (1992), and Aparecida (2007), where the future Pope Francis chaired the committee that drafted the final document.

CELAM’s leaders have presented to the Pontiff the 2021 assembly’s 144-page final document, Toward a Synodal Church Going Forth into the Periphery.

“The unprecedented aspect of the first Ecclesial Assembly lies in having courageously and prophetically marked a point of discontinuity, because from now on, it will no longer be possible to avoid the participation of the people of God in the various decisions of the Church,” said CELAM’s president, Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte, OFM, of Trujillo (Peru).