From 10 to 12 May 2024, the Umbria-Marche Regional Catechistic conference will be held at the Domus Pacis in Assisi, on the theme “Do you celebrate the Lord because he is good? A community that celebrates and bears witness to the Kerygma”. The meeting involves 21 dioceses, 8 from Umbria and 13 from the Marche, and is aimed mainly at the directors of the diocesan catechetical offices and their teams. However, catechists and priests who are interested can also participate. «It is the first interregional catechetical conference to be held in Italy», states Don Calogero Di Leo of the archdiocese of Perugia-Città della Pieve and coordinator of the commission for catechesis of the Umbrian Episcopal Conference.
«We are within the synodal path of the Italian Church and, with my brother from the Marche Don Emanuele Pizzai (Diocese of Senigallia), we thought of organizing this conference between two ecclesiastical regions that share a homogeneous territory, with a method of transmitting the faith similar to the younger generations. This proposal, which is a trailblazer at a national level, – continues Don Calogero – is viewed with interested eyes by the Catechistic Office of the Italian Episcopal Conference and has found full support from our Bishops of Umbria and the Marche”. The conference will discuss some themes outlined by Pope Francis on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the birth of the National Catechetical Office: the new evangelization, the importance of the liturgy as a natural place for catechesis and the importance of the community. «The conference – says Don Calogero Di Leo – will not stop only at analyses, we will try to bring out a new, convincing, engaging catechesis, capable of facing the challenges of world change. We will then deliver our reflections to the Italian Episcopal Conference which, once it has received all the proposals from the other regions of Italy, will start a new planning of catechesis at a national level”.
Various Bishops of the two Regions will participate in the conference and will conclude with the Eucharistic celebration on Sunday 12 May in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli presided over by Msgr. Renato Boccardo archbishop of Spoleto-Norcia and president of the Umbrian Episcopal Conference.
