– a word which is hidden in our society, as if it were a bad word,
solidarity, and fraternity: these are what make our society truly human.
… Be servers of communion and of the culture of encounter! …
And do so without being presumptuous, imposing 'our truths'. What must guide
us is the humble yet joyful certainty of those who have been found, touched
and transformed by the Truth who is Christ, ever to be proclaimed”.
Following Mass and after blessing those present, the Pope proceeded by
Popemobile to the Municipal Theatre to meet with leading members of Brazilian
society.
___________________________________________________________
FRANCIS TO BRAZIL'S LEADERS: A COUNTRY GROWS WHEN ITS CULTURAL COMPONENTS
ARE IN DIALOGUE
Vatican City, 28 July 2013 (VIS) - “In you I see both memory and
hope: the memory of your country’s history and identity, and the hope of
this country that, in constant openness
Subject: VISnews130728
From: Vatican Information Service - Eng - txt
to the light radiating from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it
will continue to develop in full respect for the ethical principles grounded
in the transcendent dignity of the person. Memory of the past and utopia for
the future encounter each other in the present, which is not a conjuncture
without past and without
promise, but rather a moment in time, the challenge of accumulating wisdom and
knowing how to project it”. With these words Pope Francis began his
address to leading members of Brazilian society in the Municipal Theatre
yesterday afternoon. The
meeting was attended by politicians, diplomats, representatives of civil
society, business and culture, and leaders of the country's main religious
communities.
The Holy Father, who was welcomed upon arrival by the president of the
Theatre and by the Secretary of State for Culture, quoted the Brazilian
thinker Alceu Amoroso Lima who said that those in positions of responsibility
are called to face the future
'with the calm gaze of one who knows how to see the truth', and added,
“I would like to consider three aspects of this calm, serene and wise
'gaze': first, the distinctiveness of your cultural tradition; second, joint
responsibility for building
the future; and third, constructive dialogue in facing the present
moment”.
“It is important, first”, he said, “to esteem the dynamic
and distinctive character of Brazilian culture, with its extraordinary ability
to integrate a variety of elements. The common 'feeling' of a people, the
foundations of its
thought and creativity, the basic principles of its life, the criteria with
which it assesses priorities and ways of acting, all rest, unite and grow on
the basis of an integral vision of the human person. This vision of man and of
life so typical of
the Brazilian people has been greatly nourished by the Gospel through the
Catholic Church: above all, by faith in Jesus Christ, in the love of God and
brotherhood with our neighbour. But the richness of this nourishment must be
fully appreciated! It can
render fruitful a cultural process that is true to Brazilian identity and
capable of building a better future for all”.
“To promote an integral humanism and the culture of encounter and
relationship: this is the Christian way of promoting the common good, the joy
of living. Here, faith and reason unite, the religious dimension and the
various aspects of human
culture – art, science, labour, literature… Christianity combines
transcendence and incarnation; it brings ever new vitality to thought and
life, in contrast to the dissatisfaction and disillusionment which may creep
into hearts and spread
throughout the streets”.
The second element, social responsibility, “calls for a certain kind
of cultural, and hence political, paradigm”, the Pope explained.
“We are the ones responsible for training new generations, for helping
them to be knowledgeable in
economic and political affairs, and solidly grounded in ethical values. The
future presents us today with the task of rehabilitating politics …
which is one of the highest forms of charity. The future also demands of us a
humanistic vision of the
economy and a politics capable of ensuring greater and more effective
participation on the part of all, eliminating forms of elitism and eradicating
poverty. This is the road that we are called to travel: to see that basic
needs are met and that human
dignity, brotherhood and solidarity are guaranteed on every level. In the days
of prophet Amos, God’s stern warning was already frequently heard: 'They
sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals
– they … trample down the head of the poor into the dust of the
earth and push the afflicted out of the way'. The outcry, the call for
justice, continues to be heard even today”.
He commented that “anyone exercising a role of leadership needs to
have very practical goals and to seek specific means to attain them. At the
same time, there is also always the risk of disappointment, resentment and
indifference, if our plans
and goals do not materialize. The dynamic virtue of hope inspires us to keep
pressing on, to employ all our energies and abilities on behalf of those for
whom we work, accepting results, making it possible to strike out on new
paths, being generous even
without apparent results, yet keeping hope alive, with that constancy and
courage that arise from accepting the vocation of guide and leader”.
“Leadership also means making the most just decision after having
considered all the options from the standpoint of personal responsibility and
concern for the common good. This is the way to go to the heart of the evils
of a society and to
overcome them, also with the boldness of courageous and free actions. It is
our responsibility, with all its limitations, it is important to embrace all
of reality ... to make decisions in the present but with an eye to the future,
reflecting on the
consequences of our decisions. To act responsibly is to see one’s own
actions in the light of other people’s rights and God’s judgement.
To preserve this ethical sense appears today as an unprecedented historic
challenge … We
must seek it and integrate it in society. Beyond scientific and technical
competence, the present situation also demands a sense of moral obligation
expressed in a social and deeply fraternal exercise of responsib
lity”.
Finally, Francis spoke on the aspect he considers essential for facing the
present moment: constructive dialogue. “Between selfish indifference and
violent protest there is always another possible option: that of dialogue.
Dialogue between
generations, dialogue with the people, because we are all the people, the
capacity to give and receive, while remaining open to the truth. A country
grows when constructive dialogue occurs between its many rich cultural
components. … It is
impossible to imagine a future for society without a significant contribution
of moral energies within a democratic order which will always be tempted to
remain caught up in the interplay of vested interests. I consider fundamental
in this dialogue the
contribution made by the great religious traditions, which play a fruitful
role as a leaven of society and a life-giving force for democracy. Peaceful
coexistence between different religions is favoured by the laicity of the
state, which,
without appropriating any one confessional stance, respects and esteems the
presence of the religious dimension in society, while fostering its most
concrete expressions”.
“When leaders in various fields ask me for advice, my response is
always the same: dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. It is the only way for
individuals, families and societies to grow, the only way for the life of
peoples to progress, along with
the culture of encounter, a culture in which all have something good to give
and all can receive something good in return. … I would define this
attitude of openness and willingness, without prejudice, as 'social humility',
which promotes
dialogue. Only in this way can understanding grow between cultures and
religions, mutual esteem without needless preconceptions, in a climate of
respect for the rights of all. Today, either we stand together in dialogue, we
stand together with the
culture of encounter, or we all fall”.
The Pope concluded by asking those present to “accept these words as
an expression of my concern as Pastor of the Church and my respect and
affection for the Brazilian people. Fraternal relations between people, and
cooperation in building a
more just society – these are not simply a fanciful dream, but the fruit
of a concerted effort on the part of all, in service of the common good. I
encourage you in your commitment to the common good, a commitment which
demands of everyone wisdom,
prudence and generosity”.
Following his address, the Pope greeted personally the twenty
representatives of the categories present and then proceeded the archbishop's
palace at St. Joachim, where he lunched with the Brazilian cardinals and
archbishops.
___________________________________________________________
FRANCIS: WE NEED A CHURCH CAPABLE OF WALKING WITH THE PEOPLE
Vatican City, 28 July 2013 (VIS) – At 1.00 p.m. yesterday, Saturday,
the Pope met with the cardinals and bishops of Brazil and the presidency of
the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil at the Archbishop's residence.
The meeting was
preceded by lunch. The National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) is the
most numerous in the world, and encompasses 275 ecclesiastical c
rcumscriptions, of which there are 44 metropolitan dioceses, 213 dioceses, 3
eparchies, 11 prelatures, one
exarchate, an Ordinariate for Catholics of Oriental rite without their own
ordinary, a military ordinariate and a personal apostolic administration.
There are 459 bishops and nine cardinals, of whom five are electors. The
president of the CNBB is
Cardinal Raymundo Damasceno Assis, archbishop of Aparecida.
Given below are ample extracts from the Pope's address:
“1. Aparecida: a key for interpreting the Church’s mission
In Aparecida God gave Brazil His own Mother. But in Aparecida God also
offered a lesson about Himself, about His way of being and acting. A lesson
about the humility which is one of God’s essential features, which is a
part of God’s DNA.
Aparecida offers us a perennial teaching about God and about the Church; a
teaching which neither the Church in Brazil nor the nation itself must forget.
At the beginning of the Aparecida event, there were poor fishermen looking for
food. So much hunger
and so few resources. People always need bread. People always start with their
needs, even today.
Then, when God wills it, He mysteriously enters the scene. The waters are
deep and yet they always conceal the possibility of a revelation of God. He
appeared out of the blue, perhaps when He was no longer expected. The patience
of those who await
Him is always tested. And God arrived in a novel fashion, since God is always
a surprise: as a fragile clay statue, darkened by the waters of the river and
aged by the passage of time. God always enters clothed in poverty, littleness.
Then there is the
statue itself of the Immaculate Conception. First, the body appeared, then the
head, then the head was joined to the body: unity. What had been broken is
restored and becomes one. Colonial Brazil had been divided by the shameful
wall of slavery. Our
Lady of Aparecida appears with a black face, first separated, and then united
in the hands of the fishermen. … God’s message was one of
restoring what was broken, reuniting what had been divided. Walls, chasms,
differences
which still exist today are destined to disappear. The Church cannot neglect
this lesson: she is called to be a means of reconciliation.
The fishermen do not dismiss the mystery encountered in the river, even if
it is a mystery which seems incomplete. They do not throw away the pieces of
the mystery. They await its completion. And this does not take long to come.
There is a wisdom
here that we need to learn. There are pieces of the mystery, like the tesserae
of a mosaic, which we encounter. We are impatient, anxious to see the whole
picture, but God lets us see things slowly, quietly. The Church also has to
learn how to wait.
Then the fishermen bring the mystery home. Ordinary people always have room to
take in the mystery. Perhaps we have reduced our way of speaking about mystery
to rational explanations; but for ordinary people the mystery enters through
the heart. In the
homes of the poor, God always finds a place.
The fishermen … clothe the Virgin drawn from the waters as if she
were cold and needed to be warmed. God asks for shelter in the warmest part of
ourselves: our heart. God himself releases the heat we need, but first he
enters like a shrewd
beggar. The fishermen wrap the mystery of the Virgin with the lowly mantle of
their faith. They call their neighbours to see its rediscovered beauty; they
all gather around and relate their troubles in its presence and they entrust
their causes to it.
In this way they enable God’s plan to be accomplished: first comes one
grace, then another; one grace leads to another; one grace prepares for
another. God gradually unfolds the mysterious humility of his power.
There is much we can learn from the approach of the fishermen. About a
Church which makes room for God’s mystery; a Church which harbours that
mystery in such a way that it can entice people, attract them. Only the beauty
of God can attract.
God’s way is through attraction. God lets Himself be brought home. He
awakens in us a desire to keep Him and his life in our homes, in our hearts.
He reawakens in us a desire to call our neighbours in order to make known His
beauty. Mission is
born precisely from this divine allure, by this amazement born of encounter.
We speak about mission, about a missionary Church. I think of those fishermen
calling their neighbours to see the mystery of the Virgin. Without the
simplicity of their
approach, our mission is doomed to failure.
The Church needs constantly to relearn the lesson of Aparecida; she must
not lose sight of it. The Church’s nets are weak, perhaps patched; the
Church’s barque is not as powerful as the great transatlantic liners
which cross the ocean.
And yet God wants to be seen precisely through our resources, scanty
resources, because he is always the one who acts. … The results of our
pastoral work do not depend on a wealth of resources, but on the creativity of
love. To be sure,
perseverance, effort, hard work, planning and organization all have their
place, but first and foremost we need to realize that the Church’s power
does not reside in herself; it is hidden in the deep waters of God, into which
she is called to cast
her nets.
Another lesson which the Church must constantly recall is that she cannot
leave simplicity behind; otherwise she forgets how to speak the language of
Mystery. Not only does she herself remain outside the door of the mystery, but
she proves incapable
of approaching those who look to the Church for something which they
themselves cannot provide, namely, God Himself. At times we lose people
because they don’t understand what we are saying, because we have
forgotten the language of simplicity and
import an intellectualism foreign to our people. Without the grammar of
simplicity, the Church loses the very conditions which make it possible 'to
fish' for God in the deep waters of his Mystery. … Aparecida took place
at a crossroads. The road
which linked Rio, the capital, with Sao Paulo, the resourceful province then
being born, and Minas Gerais, the mines coveted by the courts of Europe, was a
major intersection in colonial Brazil. God appears at the
crossroads. The Church in Brazil cannot forget this calling which was present
from the moment of her birth: to be a beating heart, to gather and to
spread.
2. Appreciation for the path taken by the Church in Brazil
The Bishops of Rome have always had a special place in their heart for
Brazil and its Church. … Today I would like to acknowledge your
unsparing work as pastors in your local Churches. I think of Bishops in the
forests, travelling up and down
rivers, in semiarid places, in the Pantanal, in the pampas, in the urban
jungles of your sprawling cities. Always love your flock with complete
devotion! I also think of all those names and faces which have indelibly
marked the journey of the Church in
Brazil, making palpable the Lord’s immense bounty towards this Church.
… The Church in Brazil welcomed and creatively applied the Second
Vatican Council, and the course it has taken, though needing to overcome some
teething problems, has
led to a Church gradually more mature, open, generous and missionary. Today,
times have changed. As the Aparecida document nicely put it: ours is not an
age of change, but a change of age. So today we urgently need to keep putting
the question: what is it that God is asking of us? I would now like to sketch
a few ideas by way of a response.
3. The icon of Emmaus as a key for interpreting the present and the
future
Before all else, we must not yield to the fear once expressed by Blessed
John Henry Newman: '… the Christian world is gradually becoming barren
and effete, as land which has been worked out and is become sand'. We must not
yield to
disillusionment, discouragement and complaint. We have laboured greatly and,
at times, we see what appear to be failures. We have the feeling we must tally
up a losing season as we consider those who have left us or no longer consider
us credible or
relevant.
Let us read once again, in this light, the story of Emmaus. The two
disciples have left Jerusalem. They are leaving behind the 'nakedness' of God.
They are scandalized by the failure of the Messiah in whom they had hoped and
who now appeared utterly
vanquished, humiliated, even after the third day. Here we have to face the
difficult mystery of those people who leave the Church, who, under the
illusion of alternative ideas, now think that the Church – their
Jerusalem – can no longer
offer them anything meaningful and important. So they set off on the road
alone, with their disappointment. Perhaps the Church appeared too weak,
perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their
concerns, perhaps too cold,
perhaps too caught up with herself, perhaps a prisoner of her own rigid
formulas, perhaps the world seems to have made the Church a relic of the past,
unfit for new questions; perhaps the Church could speak to people in their
infancy but not to those come of age. It is a fact that nowadays there are
many people like the two disciples of Emmaus; not only those looking for
answers in the new religious groups that are sprouting up, but also those who
already seem godless, both
in theory and in practice.
Faced with this situation, what are we to do? We need a Church unafraid of
going forth into their night. … We need a Church able to dialogue with
those disciples who, having left Jerusalem behind, are wandering aimlessly,
alone, with their own
disappointment, disillusioned by a Christianity now considered barren,
fruitless soil, incapable of generating meaning.
A relentless process of globalization, an often uncontrolled process of
urbanization, have promised great things. Many people have been captivated by
the potential of globalization, which of course does contain positive elements
such as, for
instance, the reduction of distances, the bringing together of people and
cultures, the distribution of information and services. But, on the other
side, many experience its negative effects without realising how much they
prejudice their own vision of
man and of the world, giving rise to greater disorientation and an emptiness
they are unable to explain. Some of these effects are confusion about the
meaning of life, personal disintegration, the loss of the experience of
belonging to a 'nest', the
lack of a sense of place and of profound links.
And since there is nobody to accompany them or to demonstrate by example
the true path, many have sought short cuts, for the standards set by Mother
Church seem to be too high. There are also those who recognise the ideal for
man and for life
proposed by the Church, but do not have the courage to embrace it. They think
this ideal is too great for them, that it is beyond their reach. Nonetheless
they cannot live without having at least something, even a poor imitation, of
what seems too lofty
and distant. With disappointed hearts, they then go off in search of something
that will raise false hopes again, or they resign themselves to a partial
solution that, in the end, will not bring fullness to their lives. The great
sense of abandonment
and solitude, of not even belonging to oneself, which often results from this
situation, is too painful to hide. Some kind of release is necessary. There is
always the option of complaining? But even complaint acts like a boomerang; it
comes back and ends up increasing one’s unhappiness. Few people are
still capable of hearing the voice of pain; the best we can do is to
anaesthetize it.
Today, we need a Church capable of walking at people’s side, of doing
more than simply listening to them; a Church which accompanies them on their
journey; a Church able to make sense of the night contained in the flight of
so many of our
brothers and sisters from Jerusalem; a Church which realizes that the reasons
why people leave also contain reasons why they can eventually return. But we
need to know how to interpret, with courage, the larger picture.
I would like all of us to ask ourselves today: are we still a Church
capable … of leading people back to Jerusalem? Of bringing them home?
Jerusalem is where our roots are: Scripture, catechesis, sacraments,
community, friendship with the
Lord, Mary and the apostles… Are we still able to speak of these roots
in a way that will revive a sense of wonder at their beauty? Many people have
left because they were promised something more lofty, more powerful, and
faster. But what is more
lofty than the love revealed in Jerusalem? Nothing is more lofty than the
abasement of the Cross, since there we truly approach the height of love! Are
we still capable of demonstrating this truth to those who think that the apex
of life is to be found
elsewhere? Do we know anything more powerful than the strength hidden within
the weakness of love, goodness, truth and beauty?
People today are attracted by things that are faster and faster: rapid
Internet connections, speedy cars and planes, instant relationships. But at
the same time we see a desperate need for calmness, I would even say slowness.
Is the Church still able
to move slowly: to take the time to listen, to have the patience to mend and
reassemble? Or is the Church herself caught up in the frantic pursuit of
efficiency? Dear brothers, let us recover the calm to be able to walk at the
same pace as our pilgrims,
keeping alongside them, remaining close to them, enabling them to speak of the
disappointments present in their hearts and to let us address them. …
We need a Church capable of bringing warmth, of lighting up hearts, and that
is capable of
restoring citizenship to her many children who are journeying, as it were, in
an exodus.
4. Challenges facing the Church in Brazil
Formation as a priority: bishops, priests, religious, laity. … It is
important to devise and ensure a suitable formation, one which will provide
persons able to step into the night without being overcome by the darkness and
losing their
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