Dear Ms. Tadsanee Mathurotsuwan – Catholic Biblical Division of Bangkok Archdiocese

Dear Friends from the CBF Middle East Region,

Greetings from CBF General Secretariat. I hope you are well in these times of insecurity due to the pandemic and made worse by political and social crises in some of your countries. We accompany you all with our prayers.
I am writing to you because, as you know, in the process of preparation for the next Plenary Assembly of the Catholic Biblical Federation we are holding a series of online meetings – “Toward the 10th Plenary Assembly” – presenting one by one all the regions of our Federation. According to our programme, the next encounter, on May 21st, will be about your region – the Middle East Region.

As I have already expressed on another occasion, the idea of these meetings is to briefly present the history and most outstanding characteristics of the region and some of the most outstanding biblical-pastoral experiences and projects.

For these meetings we use the StreamYard platform which allows to connect the participants of the meeting in the broadcast studio and to broadcast the meeting live on YouTube and the Federation’s Facebook Fan Page for the wider audience. Viewers can submit questions to the speakers in the studio by posting them in the comments section on both YouTube and Facebook. Dr. Amal Hazeen, whom many of you know, voluntarily assists us in the moderation of these meetings.

Normally the participants in the meetings are the coordinator of the Region and the delegate to the Executive Committee and two to four other people presenting experiences and/or outstanding projects from the Region. Each participant has about 15-20 minutes at his or her disposal. The presentation takes the form of a short presentation or a dialogue with the moderator. Those who want to do it in the form of a dialogue should prepare in advance the questions that the moderator will ask them during the presentation. Short videos or PowerPoint presentations can also be used.

Participants can use one of three languages: English, French or Italian, with English being preferred as the easiest to follow for a wide audience.

You can see as a reference the meeting of the Sub-region of the Catholic Biblical Federation in Southern & Western Europe.

A week before the Encounter we will have a short meeting with those who will take part in the online session and the day before the live broadcast we will do a technical test to make sure that everything is running smoothly.

I leave it to Father Pierre Najem and Sister Yara Matta to organise and coordinate the details of this event and I thank them in advance for their collaboration.

If you have any questions or suggestions, I am always ready to help you.