What do Anabaptists and Catholics have in common? They're about to come together to find out.

Bridgefolk is a "grassroots organization that fosters ongoing dialogue between Roman Catholics and Mennonites through a series of annual conferences," says Gilbert Detillieux, adding that this will be the 18th Bridgefolk conference.

Bridgefolk gives equal opportunity to the two Christian practices in sharing and hosting as the event will switch between Catholic and Mennonite venues. This year the conference will be held at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg for the first time.

This is also only the second time that the conference is being held outside the United States.

Laura Funk and Gilbert Detillieux are co-chairs of the local planning committee. The two are married and perfectly capture what relationship between the two churches can look like as Funk is "a card-carrying Mennonite," and Detillieux is a Catholic.

The first conference Funk and Detillieux attended was focused on reconciliation and analyzed the different approaches of Catholics and Mennonites. This year the conference will again focus on reconciliation this time from a Manitoba perspective that will look at the Indigenous and Settler relations.

"The Catholics and the Mennoties have very very different practices when it comes to reconciliation, for the Catholics the perspective was more about confession, rights and for Mennonites it was all about making peace with the world and each other," Funk says.

Funk and Detillieux noticed in the first reconciliation conference the differences in the way Roman Catholics and Mennonite look at reconciliation. The two said that usually, Catholics treat reconciliation with confession and rights while Mennoties focus more on making peace in the world.

The conference has focused on many topics in the past including, baptism, mercy, and service. In some cases, the two denominations seem to have a lot in common and other times have more to learn from each other.

Bridgefolk's motto is "proceeding through friendship," says Funk. The focus of this event is to learn from and appreciate the way Indigenous communities function as well as the way they approach relationship and healing.

Some of the speakers include Sister Eva Solomon, a Roman Catholic nun, an Ojibway elder, as well as Steve Heinrichs, a Mennonite Church Canada representative who works in Indigenous and Settler relations. 

The conference also likes to approach these topics in interesting and captivation ways such as storytelling. This year a play will explore reconciliation to kick off the event.

The conference is small which allows lots of conversation and questions. The amount of attendees varies year to year, with some years having 30 people attending, and other years 90.

The conference takes place at CMU July 25-28, 2019.