by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
The Vatican has announced that the 50th International Eucharistic Congress will take place in Dublin from June 10-17, 2012.

According to the Vatican Information Service, the theme for the next Congress will be “The Eucharist: Communion with Christ and with one another.”

“The choice of theme arises from the fact that the celebration of the congress coincides with the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of Vatican Council II which, as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has affirmed, was a moment of renewal for the Church’s teaching and for her understanding of herself as Body of Christ and Body of God,” the announcement explains.

“The theme has its direct inspiration in paragraph 7 of the Constitution ‘Lumen gentium’ which reads: ‘Really partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another. ‘Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread.’ In this way all of us are made members of His Body, ‘but severally members one of another.’”

The communique goes on: “The archbishop of Dublin has also emphasised the possibility of developing the theme of the next International Eucharistic Congress by reflecting on certain important topics such as: communion with Christ as a foundation for Christian life; the Eucharist as a way of life for clergy, Christian families and religious communities; the gesture of ‘breaking bread’ as a principle of Christian solidarity; the Eucharist, seed of life for the world of suffering and fragility; and ecumenism and the sharing of the one bread.”
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