FINAL STATEMENT OF 5TH AsIPA GENERAL ASSEMBLY (Part 1)

Held at Regional Seminary, Davao, Philippines

From October 20th - 28th 2009

1. PREAMBLE

1.1 The 5^th AsIPA General Assembly gathered 225 participants form 17 countries at the Regional Seminary, Davao City, Philippines from October 20^th to 28^th 2009. As we are gathered here we remember that this is the land where some 40 years ago the seeds of BECs/SCCs¹ were first sown. We also respectfully remember the BEC leaders who were martyred during the Martial Law for their prophetic commitment.

1.2 Linking with the previous assembly in Trivandrum which discussed the sacraments in SCCs and continuing the reflections of the 9^th FABC Plenary Assembly on, “Living the Eucharist in Asia” and the Synod on the ‘Word of God’ in Rome, this assembly took the theme “Do this in Memory of me (Lk.22:19): Bread Broken and Word Shared in SCCs”. We shared how the Word and the Eucharist were lived in the SCCs and we were challenged as how to SCCs can become catalysts of integral evangelization.

¹SCCs & BECs are used interchangeably. For this document we will keep to SCCs for brevity.

(to be continued..)