BRISBANE Archbishop Mark Coleridge will join dozens of Church leaders from across Oceania for a five-day meeting in Fiji, with a clear agenda to help small Pacific Island nations struggling to survive climate change.
Archbishop Coleridge said he was going “first of all as a gesture of solidarity, secondly to listen, and thirdly to ask how we can in Australia can pitch in to help”.
“Action is required because it is life or death for them,” Archbishop Coleridge said as Australian bishops prepared for the meeting in Suva.
The Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania from February 5-10 will bring together the bishops’ conferences of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea/Solomon Islands and the Pacific Islands to reflect on and pray about their shared mission in the region.
One of the key themes of the FCBCO assembly is the oceans, particularly the intersection between the People of God and the seas.
Suva Archbishop Peter Loy Chong, the president of the federation, said the bishops of Oceania must tackle the reality of rising sea levels in their part of the world “because if we don’t, no one else will”.
The bishops will participate in site visits while in Fiji to assess the impact of rising sea levels and extractive mining processes on low-lying island nations.
Ahead of the assembly, climate activist Maria Tiimon Chi-Fang, originally from Kiribati and now residing in Sydney said it was important to see how the plight of low-lying Pacific islands would affect the entire region, including Australia.
“We are already experiencing the catastrophic reality of climate change and without strong and decisive action our people may be forced to leave their home,” she said in a prepared video for the bishops.
“We risk our land, identity and our culture.
“We will continue to fight until there is no breath in us.”
In trying to help Pacific nations, Archbishop Coleridge said Australia had to be careful not be “big brother”.
“After listening to the bishops (from across the Pacific) I suppose the questions would be ‘how can we help? What can we in Australia do?’” he said.
“These questions of the environment are related to how we treat the poor and how we treat the indigenous people, and how we treat women and how we treat people who are gay – they are all connected.”
The FCBCO assembly in Suva is also earmarked for Oceania’s preparations for the Synod of Bishops for a Synodal Church – often called the Synod on Synodality.
During the assembly, a new FCBCO executive will be appointed, along with a new president for the federation.
Australia will host the next assembly, in 2027, with an Australian bishop to be named president of the federation.
Details about the 2023 assembly can be found at www.fcbco.org
