Sydney Bishop Peter Comensoli could have claimed remarkable foresight in inviting Papal front-runner Cardinal Marc Ouellet to speak at Sydney’s forthcoming The Great Grace: Receiving Vatican II Today Conference in May (20-23), but he didn’t.
Planning for the high-calibre event has been under way for at least 18 months, Bishop Comensoli told The Record last week, but the Cardinal’s presence on the conference schedule was a measure of its significance to Australia and the region, he said.
The Canadian Cardinal has been touted as one of two names most likely to emerge from the conclave when it begins, possibly as early as March 10, along with the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan Angelo Scola.
Bishop Comensoli said conference organisers had not made any contingency plans.
“We will deal with that as it happens. As you know, that is something that has only arisen in the last couple of weeks,” Bishop Comensoli said.
“This was not an issue when we started planning and engaging and inviting His Eminence to come, and he said yes.” Cardinal Ouellet was, as of February 26, the head of the Congregation for Bishops at the Holy See and will be the Great Grace Conference’s first speaker, delivering Communio: The ecclesial key to the Conciliar Church to an expected 650 participants.
Though the content will be engaging and substantive, the bishop said, the conference would not be so academic as to be inaccessible to the majority of Catholics.
Its organisers hope that people from all walks of life, and different vocations, will attend.
“It is geared for and has a strong focus on lay people and lay leadership in the life of the Church”
“This is meant to be something meaty, that has a bit of bite to it if you like.”
The conference will also feature Prof Tracey Rowland from Melbourne’s John Paul II Institute; Archbishop Allen Vigneron from Detroit; Prof Anne Hunt from the Australian Catholic University; and Archbishop Arthur Roche, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship & the Discipline of the Sacraments, in Rome.
The conference will also feature Austen Ivereigh and Jack Valero from Catholic public relations outreach Catholic Voices. Their invitation was the result of Bishop Comensoli’s direct witness of their much-lauded public relations handling of Pope Benedict XVI’s tour of the United Kingdom in 2010.
“Communication is such a central part of evangelisation. How do we communicate Christ to the world, how do we communicate with God and through God, to be proclaimers of God’s word,” Bishop Comensoli said.
Bishop Comensoli said that 50 years after it opened, the pastoral teaching that emerged from the Second Vatican Council was more prophetic than ever.
“Historically, councils of the Church unfold over a considerable period of time. We still go back to the Council of Trent to get a sense of our sacramentality.
“We go back to Vatican I in terms of our papal authority and the beginnings of our collegiality.
“Councils by their very nature are not just for the day. The Council was not just for the 1960s or the 1970s, the Second Vatican Council is something for the long-term life of the Church.
“The Holy Father only said this last week, that in many regards the significance of the Council is only just now starting to flower.”
More information on the Great Grace Conference can be found at www.thegreatgrace.org.au.