By Felipe Salvosa II | CBCP News
October 28, 2023
CBCP vice president Bishop Mylo Hubert Vergara (left) during the Prayer for Peace called by Pope Francis inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on October 27, 2023. ROY LAGARDE
ROME— The “Synod on Synodality” challenges the Church leadership and the laity to get out of their comfort zones and shun elitist tendencies, an official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said.
Bishop Mylo Hubert Vergara of Pasig, CBCP vice president, echoed the call reach out to the poor and excluded sectors made by the “Letter to the People of God,” released by synod delegates near the conclusion of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.
“It has to start with us, for example, we just want to maintain the status quo, which has been our comfort zone. That’s the easy thing to do. So it requires really a conversion. This synod is really a paradigm shift,” Vergara told CBCP News.
Vergara is one of the three representatives of the CBCP to the month-long assembly, joining the president, Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, and Cardinal Jose Advincula, archbishop of Manila.