CBCI Office for Justice, Peace and Development conducts a CST Workshop in Varanasi

New Delhi, November 29, 2012: The CBCI Office for Justice, Peace and Development organized a two-day workshop on Catholic Social Teaching at Nav Sadhana, Regional Pastoral Centre, in Varanasi, between 26 and 27 November 2012. The Workshop was attended by a group of priests and nuns and a lay activist from eight dioceses in North India. Fr. Stanny Jebamalai SJ, South Asian Secretary of Jesuits in Social Action (JESA) and Mr. Antony Arulraj, OJPD’s Advocacy Officer, were the facilitators of the workshop.

Inaugurating the workshop, Fr V Sebastian, Director of Nav Sadhana, said that the Catholic Social Teaching “is a guiding light to the Christians who, by virtue of their faith in Jesus, are called to establish a just society”. He also pointed out that “the Social Teaching of the Church has a formative value as it aims to uphold and restore human dignity”.

The workshop included group work and lectures on KeyPrinciples and Major Themes of Catholic Social Teaching, See-Judge-Act, Social Analysis, Spirituality of Justice and Peace Ministry, Rights Based Approach to Social Justice Advocacy and so on. At the end of the workshop, the participants proposed that the Catholic Social Teaching, ‘the best kept secret of the Church’, should be widely popularized by each diocese in fulfilment of the Statement issued by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India at its 30th General Body Meeting in Bangalore in February 2012. The Statement had underscored the bishops’ resolve to “make better known and implement the Church’s Social Doctrine…aiming at the integral human development of all, with a view to creating a just society”.

The Catholic Social Teaching workshop in Varanasi is the first of a series of two-day workshops on Catholic Social Teaching that the JPD Office has planned to organize in different parts of India, in order to commemorate the fiftieth year of the Vatican Council II. Such workshops would help generate a new breed of Christian leaders who vivify civil society and its structures with the leaven of the Gospel, the JPD Office hopes.

– Charles Irudayam