‘Our whole history has been a different kind of history, because most of our history has been the plantation society, we were people who were brought together for a specific economic activity from all over the world.’
Pope Leo received an invitation to visit the Caribbean after discussing the region’s lack of representation at the Synod of Synodality.
The Archbishop of Port of Spain Charles Jason Gordon, president of the Antilles Episcopal Conference (AEC), delivered the invitation during the conference’s ad limina visit to Rome between 27 April and 3 May.
Archbishop Gordon told his diocese’s weekly Catholic News that the government of Trinidad and Tobago had also extended an invitation to the Pope.
Should Leo accept the invitation, he would be the first pope to visit the region since John Paul II in 1985, an apostolic journey that included Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru.
Gordon said the AEC bishops brought several different themes to their discussions with curial officials in Rome, emphasising the particular perspective they bring to the Church.
“We are not a national conference. Most conference of bishops are national, but we’re an international conference, and it’s irregular in their experience,” he told The Tablet.
“The second thing is that we are one of the areas in the world that is vulnerable to climate change.
“The third is that our whole history has been a different kind of history, because most of our history has been the plantation society, and we weren’t a people who were colonised, we were people who were brought together for a specific economic activity from all over the world.”
The archbishop said he raised the issue of the Caribbean Church’s representation in the global Church.
“When I went to the Synod on Synodality, I was the only representative from the Caribbean. The Pacific Islands, which have fewer diocese than us, had three and four people represented, so we brought that to [Pope Leo] also,” he said.
Gordon said the Pope was paying close attention to what is happening in the Church in the Caribbean, recalling his meeting with Cardinal Mario Grech, who heads the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, during the ad limina visit.
He said Grech told him: “Well, I just met the Holy Father. We had this wonderful conversation, but it was all about you, and he instructed me that you need to have more representation in the Synod. We start with the one that is coming up. I will ensure that you get more representation.”
Gordon said this exchange “taught me a lot”, showing that Pope Leo “is listening deeply, but he’s a man of action also”.
“That in three days, a request from a bishop’s conference is answered by his instructing the head of the department. That to me, that was breathtaking.”
During a regional meeting of the Latin American bishops’ council (CELAM) in Trinidad on 8-11 June, bishops reflected on the synodal journey for the Church in the Caribbean.
“We heard things we didn’t want to hear. The wound is very deep. It requires a conversion of hearts,” Gordon said.
