Around 250 attend SHC parish assembly

KOTA KINABALU – Around 250 representatives from all the groups/ministries/communities attended the Sacred Heart Cathedral Parish Assembly on 13 Mar 2018 at the parish centre here.

The objective was for the 60 plus groups/ministries, communities from both Sacred Heart Cathedral and Church of Mary Immaculate to report on what they have done to tackle the three issues raised at the 2015 PAX Assembly: apathy, Islamisation, and secularisation through the threefold movement of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Thrust of “Go Inward, Go Smaller, and Go Outwards.”

In his introduction, Archbishop John Wong related the words of Pope Francis to the arch/bishops of Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei during their ad limina visit on 4-9 Feb 2018.

He told the assembly that the pope told them to be men of prayer so that they will know and do the will of God and also told them to pray “for” him and not “against” him.  He expressed the hope that this event will bring the groups to move towards unity as a parish family.

The assembly split into groups by language – English, Mandarin, BM – for the reports.

Later, the groups returned to the plenary assembly for the briefing of the second assembly on Apr 9.

The reports would be collated and summarised to be presented to the parish PAX committee as well as the parish pastoral council for further action.

The Apr 9 assembly would be more of an open dialogue geared towards formulating a parish report for the May 1 Archdiocesan Pre-PAX Gathering at the same venue.

The SHC parish assembly is part of the collective movement in all parishes in consolidating their reports for the pre-PAX gathering in May.