AMRSP OFFICIALLY RENAMES ITSELF TO “CONFERENCE OF MAJOR SUPERIORS IN THE PHILIPPINES”

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has finally approved the application of the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (AMRSP) to change its name to CONFERENCE OF MAJOR SUPERIORS IN THE PHILIPPINES (CMSP) on Monday, February 14, 2022.

During its first online Joint Biennial Convention held last 28-30 April 2021, the members of the Association overwhelmingly voted to rename itself to CMSP. The decision was the fruit of a long synodal process among the members of the Association (religious institutes and societies of apostolic life) and of the Joint Executive Board. The decision was born from the desire to use the more inclusive term “consecrated persons,” as defined in Saint John Paul II’s Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata in 1996, in place of the limiting term “religious”. It is also to be in line with the norms under Canon 708 and 709 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. This change is also in line with similar acts of renewal adopted by the Holy See when it renamed the dicasterial office from “Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes” to “Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL)” in 1988; and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines when it renamed the “Episcopal Commission on Mutual Relations between Bishops and Religious” into the “Episcopal Commission on Mutual Relations between Bishops and Consecrated Persons (ECMR)” in 2020. Besides the change in nomenclature, this renewal process will also entail the merger of the two constituting associations of AMRSP (i.e., the Association of Major Religious Superiors of Men in the Philippines or AMRSMP; and the Association of Major Religious Superiors of Women in the Philippines or AMRSWP), both of which were established in 1955 and canonically erected in 1956. The process of merger was explicitly supported by Cardinal Joāo Braz de Aviz in his address to the AMRSP Joint Convention in April 2020. With this decision, the Joint Executive Board and the Secretariat have commenced the processes for the canonical and civil recognition of the CMSP. The CMSP is grateful for the support it received from both the Holy See’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. The CMSP membership is presently composed of 362 religious institutes, societies of apostolic life, secular institutes out of 453 religious and secular institutes in the Philippines, representing 80 percent of the total institutes present in the country.

On February 18, 2022 at 12:45 p.m., the new Certificate of S.E.C. Registration with our new name, the Conference of Major Superiors in the Philippines (formerly the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines) was released.
#CMSP #ConferenceOfMajorSuperiorsPH