Revista Digital de los Misioneros Combonianos 
en América y Asia

CELAM
"Women agents of change".

The Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM) took an important step on March 8, 2022, coinciding with International Women's Day, by launching the continental campaign "Women Gestors of Change".
Marco Bernardoni - Week News

Miguel Cabrejos, president of CELAM and archbishop of Trujillo (Peru), explained that this is an initiative with which "we intend to make visible the contributions of women, their services and charisms, to society and the Church, through expressions of awareness, spaces of formation and actions for concrete change".
At the same time, this campaign intends to "offer visibility to the results of the listening process of the Ecclesial Assembly of Latin America and the Caribbean from a feminine perspective for a world free of violence and discrimination".

A synodal journey
The process is scheduled to last one year, from March 2022 to March 2023. Together with CELAM, in a dynamic aimed at strengthening synodal collaboration along some of the lines identified by the recent Ecclesial Assembly, other ecclesial organizations of the continent will support the project, such as REPAM (Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network), CEAMA (Amazonian Ecclesial Conference), CLAR (Latin American Confederation of Religious) and Caritas Latin America.
"Women are protagonists of a Church going out" as "Pope Francis reminded us, highlighting their ability to welcome and announce the good news," said Monsignor Cabrejos. "In the history of salvation, it is a woman who welcomes the Word; and it is also women who in the dark night guard the flame of faith, who await and announce the Resurrection."
The campaign aims to give voice to all the women of the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean: lay women, religious, missionaries, catechists, teachers, workers, young people.

Three different phases
According to the press release issued by CELAM, the "Women Agents of Change" initiative is structured in three dimensions - listening, meditation and loving action - which will be developed concretely in three different stages: awareness-raising, formation and advocacy.
In the first phase of awareness-raising, from March to May, the aim is to highlight, through a series of events, the many areas in which women have made an important contribution to the Church and to society.
This first phase will address systematically and broadly the defense of life in a holistic perspective (human life from conception to natural death, but also the life of the "common home" and the development of an eco-theology, listening to the cry of the earth and the poor), the evangelizing and missionary role of women in the different areas and territories of the continent (synodality and the protagonism of women in society and in the Church) and the fight against violence and structural inequalities (among the challenges of the Ecclesial Assembly).
In the second phase, from June to October, there will be virtual and face-to-face formation sessions with personalities (theologians, academic leaders, researchers) to promote spaces for dialogue and reflection.
Finally, the third and decisive phase of promotion, from October to March 2023, will aim to implement concrete actions for the transformation of the Latin American reality by promoting "the development of protocols of just work, in collaboration with the ecclesial jurisdictions of the continent and in line with the Synod of Synodality".