Announcement of Series of Five Intercontinental Conferences and Appointment of Eight Additional Hands of the Cause
On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the opening of the memorable Holy Year associated with the Centenary celebrations of the birth of the Mission of Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán—an anniversary falling only a few months before the decade-long global Spiritual Crusade, on which the entire company of His followers have embarked, will have reached its midway point—I feel moved to announce the convocation of a series of Intercontinental Conferences, five in number, to be held successively in Kampala, Uganda, in the heart of the African continent; in the city of Sydney, the oldest Bahá’í center established in the Antipodes; in Chicago, where the name of Bahá’u’lláh was publicly mentioned for the first time in the western world; in the city of Frankfurt, in the heart of the European continent; and in Djakarta, the capital city of the Republic of Indonesia.
These historic gatherings, which will recall in some of their aspects the four epoch-making Conferences which commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the inception of the Bahá’í Revelation, are to be held respectively in the months of January, March, May, July and September, under the auspices of the Regional Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Central and East Africa, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Australia, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States of America, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Germany and Austria, and the Regional Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of South-East Asia.
They are to be convened by the chairmen of the aforementioned Regional and National Spiritual Assemblies for the five-fold purpose of offering humble thanksgiving to the Divine Author of our Faith, Who has graciously enabled His followers, during a period of deepening anxiety and amidst the confusion and uncertainties of a critical phase in the fortunes of mankind, to prosecute uninterruptedly the Ten-Year Plan formulated for the execution of the Grand Design conceived by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; of reviewing and celebrating the series of signal victories won so rapidly in the course of each of the campaigns of this world-encircling Crusade; of deliberating on ways and means that will insure its triumphant consummation; and of lending simultaneously a powerful impetus, the world over, to the vital process of individual conversion—the preeminent purpose underlying the Plan in all its ramifications—and to the construction and completion of the three Mother Temples to be built in the European, the African, and Australian continents.