For the first time in its two thousand-year history the Catholic Church can now truly claim to be a 'universal' church. No longer solely the church of the Latin West, it has become the church 'of six continents', a World Church in which the peoples of the Third World predominate Such a fundamental shift in the church's awareness of itself is perhaps more radical in its implications than the Second Vatican Council - yet this seismic shift has hardly registered within the church of the First World. From his long experience of mission, Walbert Bühlmann focuses on the development of the church in Africa, Asia, and South America and indicates how the church as a whole can millennium- benefit from the new values and forms of Christian living in preparation for meeting the third emerging from these churches. What structures and what pastoral strategies will the church adopt for the year 2001?

'In the year 2200 the church must and will look very different in its outward appearance from what we are accustomed to today. Is this future image to come upon the church unquestioned in advance? must there not be in the church a more far-seeing worldwide strategy of pastoral care than hitherto? This seems to me a genuine question for the Or.. can and church, one that is not perceived clearly enough. Simply to pose this question seems to me also a way in which pastoral theology can and must be pursued. That is what is done germinally, but effectively - in this book by Walbert Bühlmann'. (Karl Rahner)

Walbert Bühlmann, OFM Cap., was a missionary, taught missiology at Freiburg University, edited missionary journals, and was professor at the Gregorian University and secretary general for the Capuchin missions. He now lives in his native Switzerland. His principal publications include "The Coming of the Third Church" and "Missions on Trial".