POPE WELCOMES CANADIAN BISHOPS AT CASTELGANDOLFO

VATICAN CITY, SEP 25, 1999 (VIS) - This morning at Castelgandolfo the Pope welcomed the bishops of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, as well as Cardinal Ambrozic of Toronto, with his auxiliaries, as they concluded their quinquennial "ad limina" visit.

Saying that "one of the fruits of the Spirit in the years since the (Vatican) Council has been the stirring of new spiritual vitality and apostolic energies among the lay faithful," the Pope added that he wished "to share some brief thoughts on the relationship between priests and the lay faithful."

Addressing the prelates in both English and French, John Paul II affirmed that "we readily speak of bishops and priests as 'pastors', drawing upon the biblical and patristic tradition, in which the image of the shepherd is rich and evocative. Sometimes, though, this has been accompanied by a certain reluctance to speak of lay people as 'the flock', as if to do so condemned the laity to a strictly passive and dependent role."

There is, he stressed, "a complementarity and communion" in the relationship between pastors and the lay faithful. To reinforce this concept, he cited the biblical image of the shepherd and his flock, saying this image offers us "a vision of life-giving reciprocity: the sheep live by the shepherd and the shepherd lives by the sheep." And he stressed that "the heart of all pastoral activity and of every form of apostolate is union with Christ's Paschal mystery."

"Such a vision of complementarity and communion between priests and laity," the Pope went on, "involves specific lifestyles for priests, ... which make it abundantly clear that the priest is a man set apart for a particular service. ... If the priest is not clearly set apart, he cannot fulfill the service that the Church asks of him; if he is not truly a servant, this will lead to an empty and sterile solitude, which is extraneous to an authentic pastor."

While everyone is a member of the Body of Christ, observed the Holy Father, not everyone has the same functions. "The pastoral ministry of priests is never to be a manner of stifling the initiatives of the laity nor reducing the people to an attitude of passivity or dependence. ... Care must be taken, however, to avoid attenuating the distinction between the ministerial priest and the lay vocation, for this is certainly not what the Council Fathers had in mind when they asked for greater cooperation between priests and laity."

He pointed out that the principal domain of the laity is society. "The laity, men and women, are called there to fulfill their baptismal vocation and to promote the art of being Christians in the world. ... It is precisely the evangelizing mission of the laity in the world which constitutes the Church's answer to the malaise of indifference."
"Therefore," Pope John Paul concluded, "we must carefully avoid any form of ecclesial introversion that would be unfaithful to the Council's intention, since it would diminish rather than increase the missionary thrust required to meet the needs of the new century."

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