The Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (AMRSP) will now be known as Conference of Major Superiors in the Philippines (CMSP).
The members voted to rename itself during its first online Joint Biennial Convention held last April 28 to 30.
"The decision was the fruit of a long synodal process among the members of the Association (religious institutes and societies of apostolic life) and of the Joint Executive Board," the group said in a statement dated May 5.
"The decision was born from the desire to use the more inclusive term 'consecrated persons,' as defined in Saint John Paul II’s Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata, in place of the limiting term 'religious.'" it added.
Aside from being in line with the norms under Canon 708 and 709 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the group said, the change is also in line with similar acts of renewal adopted by the Holy See when it renamed the dicasterial office from “Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes” to “Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL)” in 1988; and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines when it renamed the “Episcopal Commission on Mutual Relations between Bishops and Religious” into the “Episcopal Commission on Mutual Relations between Bishops and Consecrated Persons (ECMR)” in 2020.
"Besides the change in nomenclature, this renewal process will also entail the merger of the two constituting associations of AMRSP (i.e., the Association of Major Religious Superiors of Men in the Philippines or AMRSMP; and the Association of Major Religious Superiors of Women in the Philippines or AMRSWP), both of which were established in 1955 and canonically erected in 1956," it said.
CMSP said the process of merger was explicitly supported by Cardinal Joāo Braz de Aviz in his address to the AMRSP Joint Convention this year.
"With this decision, the Joint Executive Board and the Secretariat have commenced the processes for the canonical and civil recognition of the CMSP. The CMSP is grateful for the support it received from both the Holy See’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines," it said.
The CMSP is presently composed of 362 religious institutes and societies of apostolic life, out of 453 such congregations in the Philippines, representing 80 percent of the total institutes and societies present in the country.