Tony Flannery

International Catholic Priest Movements and Reform Groups Urge Church Progress on Key Issues during October meeting

From October 17 – 20, 2016, forty priests and lay persons from ten countries gathered in Chicago to develop strategies supporting reform in the Catholic Church. The group called for progress on: full equality for women in the Church; rights for LGBT Catholics; fundamental rights for all Catholics; and developing emerging models of parish ministry such as the Bishop Fritz Lobinger model.

3rd International Conference of Church Reform Network; Chicago, October 2016

Forty two people gathered in Chicago for four days last week to take part in this conference. They came from eleven different countries in four continents. Most of the participants were representing a Church reform movement. They was a mixture of lay, clergy, women and men. All the main priests associations were represented, from Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Slovakia, Australia, the U.S.

Tomorrow morning (Sunday 16th) I fly out to Chicago to participate in the 3rd International Conference of the network of Church Reform Organisations.
I am really looking forward to it. It is a participative conference, confined to leaders or representatives of reform groups. There are forty one people attending, which is about the maximum that can be managed in a participative gathering, with no formal presentations. I know most of the people, men and women, who are coming, and they constitute a really interesting group of people.