Churches in Mexico have met members of the United Nations Development Program to discuss the implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 17 goals were agreed by the UN in September 2015 and welcomed by Church leaders around the world. They are a follow-on to the Millennium Development Goals which were introduced in 1999. This week, members of La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico (IAM) – the Anglican Church of Mexico – together with Christians from other denominations and ecumenical groups, met to discuss their role in implementing the SDGs.
Members of IAM joined their ecumenical partners from the Latin American Council of Churches, the Theological Community of Mexico and the Evangelical Missionary Church of the New Covenant for the meeting.
“There are 17 objectives that have to do with social justice, development, well-being with aspects of health and attention of vulnerable people, among others,” IAM spokesman Arturo Carrasco Gómez told La Journada Sociedad. “We discussed the possibility of coordinating with the different churches so that each one puts our human capital at the service of the achievement of the SDGs.”
Gómez said that the churches who took part in the meeting supported the implementation of the SDGs and were creating an umbrella group, called Faith Based Organisations. They were also going to expand dialogue with other Churches in Mexico, including the Catholic Church, “because there are common goals,” he said. “An example is Laudato Si’, the encyclical of Pope Francis in which there is a clear concern for the care of the environment.”
The UNDP’s Javier González Gómez told the church leaders that while the original Millennium Development Goals were not fully achieved, there had left to favourable advances. The target now was to fully implement the SDGs by 2030.
Anglican Communion News Service