Mission

„Remember to the many children of the Church those who lived in hidden family-,vacation- and social-life during the history of Europe in a noble, genuine and holy way. There are also wide social and cultural stratas and we have to perform an unmitigated pagan-mission among them.” (Pope John Paul II: Ecclesia in Europa)

Nowadays a lot of people have spiritual storm and they seem to be run out of intellectual and spiritual reserves.There are more and more people living without a spiritual background around us.There has been radical changes in the life of the Church in the cities of Europe during the last fifty years. Poeople of this time is the ’fold without a shepherd’ we are sent to by Christ. The observable changes inspire us to renew our witness of our faith.The Holy Father encourages the participants of the congress in this way on 20th February, 2004 – ’The cities of Europe need a new momentum to vivify the christianity.’ The plan of city-missions (ICNE) conceived of the collective decision by the cardinals of four Europian cities – Vienna, Paris, Lisboa and Bruxelles – and with the support of Community Emmanuel.The first city-mission was organised in Vienna in May, 2003.The second one was in Paris in 2004. Cardinal Peter Erdő announced the mission-program of the archdiocese between 2003 and 2005 on Pentecost, 2003 and publicized the mission-plan to the year 2007 in November. The program known as ’city–mission’ covers two main program-package according to the experiences in Vienna and in Paris. The first package is the ’Congress for the New Evangelisation’ which is a main evangelisation-program on remarkable embematic places taking for some days and several kind of meetings and programs are connecting to this main program e.g. liturgy, academic-congress, witness, colloquy, introduction, etc.

The experiences of people who are living in several parts of evangelisation are shared and the way of life and values of Christians are offered to the target audience.

The second package is the ’city-mission’ in a closer sense which has a central part as local evangelisation programs and its most typical characteristic is ’optional’ with respect of the different makings and possibilities at the parishes. Street-evangelisation, art-festival, liturgy, social-mission, sermon-series, sport event, concert, colloquy, and many invitation-program can be besides these programs.

The main organisators and invitors are the parishes, catholic institutes and spiritual movements. The intellectual and spiritual stress is on the personal meeting with Jesus and the renewal of the connection with Him at both packages. The target audience, programs and organisation methods are different at the two program-package but the annual cooperation and coordination is essential. The reports from Vienna and Paris appropriate big capacity and long term for pre-organisations. A huge material-technical and personal background is needed besides the intellectual and spiritual ’pre-work’.

’Every cities have its own history, its own face. Even though in terms of clerical profession we could realise astonishing similarities in the situation of cities. That is why we – the cardinals of cities – decided to try the evangelisation of cities together with the experiences of each other and with joint efforts. Our aim is to promote the re-evangelisation of cities and renew the parishes in the cities through our mission.’