Pope Francis at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square Dec. 18. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
VATICAN CITY — Today’s article in the Italian Jesuit journal, La Civilta’ Cattolica, offers more fresh insight from Pope Francis into how men and women can live out religious and consecrate life more fully. As a member of the world’s largest order of religious men and as someone who served as head of the Jesuit province in Argentina, the pope’s insight is particularly valuable.
The article gives an in-depth account of the three-hour, closed-door informal meeting the pope had with 120 superiors general of men’s religious orders Nov. 29.
While you can access the full 17-page article in English, Spanish or Italian at the journal’s website, here is a sampling of some of our favorite excerpts (CNS translations of the original Italian).
- Today’s religious men and women need to be prophetic, “capable of waking up the world,” of showing they are a special breed who “have something to say” to the world today.
- “The church must be attractive. Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, acting, living! (Show) it’s possible to live differently in this world.”
A nun chatting with a woman on a street corner in Seville, Spain, Aug. 2013. (CNS photo/Marcelo del Pozo, Reuters)
- They need to live and behave in a truly different way, recognizing one’s weakness and sins, but acting with “generosity, detachment, sacrifice, forgetting oneself in order to take care of others.”
- “It’s necessary to spend time in real contact with the poor. For me this is really important: it’s necessary to know from experience what’s real, to dedicate time going to the periphery to truly know the situation and the life of the people.”
- Without firsthand experience with people’s lives, “then one runs the risk of being abstract ideologues or fundamentalists, and this is not healthy.”
Fr. Nestor Torres of the Chicago Archdiocese working with young men and women at Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in Des Plaines, Ill., this 2012 file photo. (CNS photo/Karen Callaway, Catholic New World)
- “Those who work with young people cannot limit themselves to saying things that are too ordered and structured like a treaty because these things fly over their heads. A new language is needed, a new way of saying things. Today God calls us to leave the nest that’s holding us and to be emissaries.”
- A charism needs to be “lived according to the place, times and people. The charism is not a bottle of distilled water. It needs to be lived with energy, rereading it culturally, too.”
The dedication of Our Lady of La Vang Chapel at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington Oct. 21, 2006. (CNS photo/Matthew Barrick, courtesy of the National Shrine)
- “Inculturating a charism, therefore, is fundamental, and this does not mean relativizing it. We must not make a charism rigid and uniform. When we make our cultures uniform, then we kill the charism.”
- “The specter to combat is the image of religious life as a refuge and comfort away from a world on the ‘outside’ that is difficult and complex.”
- Thinking formation is completed after seminary studies “is hypocrisy, fruit of clericalism.”
Seminarians during a chorus rehearsal at the Hispanic Seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe Nov. 22, 2013 in Mexico City. (CNS photo/David Maung)
- Preparing new members for religious life is “a craft, not a police operation. We must include the formation of hearts. Otherwise we are creating little monsters. And then these little monsters mold the people of God. This really gives me goose bumps.”
- People working in formation need to think about the people of God these men and women will be in contact with. “I’m reminded of those religious who have a heart as sour as vinegar: they are not made for the people. We must not create administrators and managers, but fathers, brothers and sisters, travel companions.”
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Wow, very powerful words. Thank you for sharing.
I saw a movie ” License to wed” where a priest was walking with a soon-to-be married couple inside a maternity wing of a hospital.
That movie gave me the courage to say that those priests who condemn women killing the unborn, should first watch a child coming into the world.
The priest is supposed to look at the child birth, not at the woman .
This way, that priest will start condemning whose fathers who “kill” their unborn children by disappearing after they, the fathers procreated them.
So, priests should preach first of all about “fatherless ” , and only then, about abortion.
Revealing comments, challenging.
I’d love Pope Francis. He is so real and relevant to todays needs. May God continue to bless him and his endeavors to change the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis knows what he is talking about and We are blessed with a someone as grounded like him. It is my fervent wish that what he is talking about should also trickle down to the parishes where many priests have attitudes, most of the time could not connect to the people.
First of all Jennyroca, I have never heard a priest condemn a woman who killed her unborn child, only the act itself. I referred a woman grieving her abortion to a priest trained in healing by Project Rachel. With tears running down her cheeks she told me of her descent into depression and alcoholism. That’s one of the very real problems with abortion. It traumatizes so many- men, women, boyfriends, husbands, wives , children to be born later and yes, healthcare workers who participate in those things. Think about the impact abortion has on children whose mother is rendered dysfunctional by depression and alcoholism resulting from abortion- yes, often coerced or abandoned by the child’s father. After the unborn child the mother is the primary victim- she is damaged emotionally spiritually and physically but there are others including many men who also grieve the loss of the child because of the mother’s “choice” At least in my faith area, as I suspect in many others, such things are not discussed. Our priests have not insisted only on the Church’s teachings on abortion. In fact it is rarely mentioned and when it is it comes in the form encouraging women with “difficult pregnancies” and “respect for all life”. Abortion is usually shrouded in euphemisms because it is considered, “too controversial”. Perhaps that is why, we as Catholics, are responsible for 31 % of US abortions- approximately 300,000 a year.
“Wake Up the World”, “Dust it off” Just what we Need is Pope Francis to open our sqeeky doors and let the Fresh air in.. Great I hope Pope Francis follows thru our church is still in the 50th yr after christ and is in need of a update…Get back to basics…Jesus stories have been interpreted by men for a long time…Jesus ment one thing love compasion and well being for all.. Jesus was Jewish and man gave it a subculture named it Roman Catholic (Peters Death) Paul.. which means a Roman gathering of people and started tracking time since his death.His every word was written down by one of the 12 apostels (no) and we today we think we know who he was and what he represented.
That was as I said before Love, Compasion and well being for all.