CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines (UCAN) -- Virginia Palma, who helps her husband run a junk shop in their southern Philippine home, spends weekends visiting communities living around chapels far from the parish center.

Lay coordinators, leaders and workers of basic ecclesial communities (BEC) in small discussion groups defined rural development, local and national priorities at the 2nd national congress organized by the bishops' conferences BEC Committee Nov. 10-14 in Cagayan de Oro.

Volunteering with a parish Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC) formation team in Butuan City, 820 kilometers southeast of Manila, she conducts Saturday workshops in Prosperidad district for members of BEC cells with fewer than 20 families each. At times she runs seminars for leaders they elect to represent them in a cluster of neighboring cells.

"Meetings must be in the evening, when people are free," Palma told UCA News during the Nov. 10-14 national BEC congress, which the Committee on BEC of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) is conducting in Cagayan de Oro City, southwest of Butuan.

Palma said even with the night meetings, members, mostly women, arrive when they can. She sometimes has to wait for hours for parish workers who say they first have to attend to chores and children's or husbands' needs.

"This is why many do not come to the parish church, so we must wait patiently," said the mother of two.

Palma was one of about 150 lay BEC workers who attended the congress with 19 bishops, 77 priests, 20 Religious and other members of political, socio-developmental and national lay groups to discuss the role of BECs in rural development.

She runs programs developed by lay formators for BEC cell members and cluster leaders. A cell, the most basic BEC unit, is made up of not more than 20 families who gather for weekly sharing on the Bible. In some dioceses the cells embark on community projects and activities, livelihood programs and anti-corruption monitoring.

In many cases cells are grouped into clusters that elect leaders to represent them in parish councils and activities. Dioceses and parish volunteers conduct formation programs for cell members and cluster leaders.

Palma told UCA News that although the parish priest offers her gasoline money, she pays her own way and buys teaching aids with her own money "to help the parish." Her daughters are at college and her husband supports her Church service.

"I volunteer because I believe BEC is really the way the Church should be," she said. She cited a woman's sharing during a formation workshop about helping her neighbor do laundry. She cannot see that kind of "solid Christian" relationship thriving among parishioners if the Church relied on traditional parish pastoral councils.

The Philippine Church's national pastoral plan, drafted by bishops, priests, Religious and lay Catholics, envisions a "Church of the Poor" and "renewed integral evangelization." The bishops later resolved that BECs would be the "new way of being Church."
  In a congress presentation, Jesuit Father Simplicio Sumpayco, who has worked for four decades on pastoral formation in BECs, called the BEC a "new model" compared to the traditional parish comprising "thousands of members hardly knowing one another." Traditionally, parishes have a "cultic and clerical" culture and reach largely "prominent well-to-do" parishioners. Priests just wait for the usual Church-going parishioners to arrive.

In some places, priests remain in this mold, delegates reported. At meals during the congress, some discussed difficulties with older priests, while others said young priests do not support "empowering" laypeople.

Redemptorist Bishop Emmanuel Cabajar of Pagadian said during the bishops' session that "priests can be the most destructive element of BEC." When parish assignments are reshuffled, some priests destroy the good work of predecessors to build their own monument. "We are in this together," he reminded.

Priest-delegates acknowledged much has to be done to "convert" priests to the BEC way of ministering, which Father Jun Villanueva of San Jose diocese on Mindoro Island said is time-consuming and hard work for pastors. Many hold at least one two-hour formation session with cluster leaders each month, and go to visit remote chapel communities during the week. "It is not just a say-Mass-and-go visit," he stressed.

The five-day congress aims to share stories of BEC experiences, discuss rural development and formulate a BEC agenda for it, Redemptorist Father Amado Picardal explained at the first session.

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