A nine-year plan to reinvigorate the Catholic Church in the Philippines

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has issued a pastoral letter on the New Evangelization for the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christianity in the Philippines.

Started in 2013, each year of the New Evangelization is devoted to a
particular aspect of the Philippine church and its people.

“This task of New Evangelization calls us to continue more earnestly the
initiatives and projects which have been ongoing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are called to examine more deeply the pastoral situation that we all face together as Church in the Philippines,” CBCP president Bishop Jose S. Palma wrote in the Primer on the Year of Faith and the New Evangelization.

Four areas of concern

There are four areas of concern in the Philippines’ pursuit of the New Evangelization. First is the intensification of promoting missio ad gentes in communities, lay people, priests and seminarians, and men and women. Second is the imperative of “bringing good news to the poor.”

Third is to reach out to many Catholics whose faith-knowledge and faith-practice have been largely eroded and even lost. Fourth is to renew attention and zeal toward the reawakening, fuller formation, and animation of young people and youth groups in urban and
rural areas.

CBCP also emphasized three faith imperatives for these evangelizing efforts to be fruitful. These are the centrality of the Eucharist, the necessity of prayer, and the necessity of conversion. To prepare the faithful for 2021, the bishops announced a “nine-year journey for the New Evangelization” with a different theme for each year.

The nine-year era of New Evangelization

• Year 2013: Integral Faith Formation. This year was dedicated to reaching out to those who have drifted away from the Christian faith.
• Year 2014: Laity. This year celebrated both the sacrament of baptism by which all the faithful become God’s sons and daughters and the sacrament of confirmation by which they become witnesses of Christ to others.
• Year 2015: The Poor. This year was dedicated to committing ourselves more firmly to our vision of becoming truly a Church of the Poor. The new evangelization is also a powerful call from the Lord to follow in His footsteps to be evangelically poor.
• Year 2016: The Eucharist and of the Family. This year’s focus was on the pastoral action of making the Eucharist better appreciated and its missionary implication better lived by the Catholic faithful.
• Year 2017: The Parish as a Communion of Communities. The year of discernment on the quality of faith in the parish, the fellowship, belongingness, and participation experienced by the Catholic faithful.
• Year 2018: Clergy and Religious. This was a year dedicated to the integral renewal of the values, mindsets, behavior, and lifestyles of the clergy and the religious.
• Year 2019: Youth. The year was dedicated to inviting the youth to discern deeply their vocation in the world and in the Church, especially the Lord’s invitation to them to the priestly and religious life.
• Year 2020: Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Dialogue. This year was devoted to exploring new ways of forging a community through ecumenical and inter-religious relationships and action.
• Year 2021: Missio ad gentes. This year will be devoted to how we are fulfilling that vocation, how a mission-consciousness in all the faithful can be formed, how each one can be animated into becoming a missionary even at home, and more concretely how parishes and dioceses are supporting our own Philippine Mission Society.

The year-long celebration of the 500 Years of Christianity in the Philippines began on April 4, 2021, Easter Sunday.