Vatican City, 27 November 2014 (VIS) –
This morning, in the Consistory Hall of the Apostolic Palace, Pope
Francis received in audience the participants in the second phase of
the International Pastoral Congress on the World's Big Cities, held
in Barcelona, Spain from 24 to 26 November. The Holy Father took the
opportunity to explore in depth four challenges and possible
prospects for urban pastoral ministry. “The places where God is
calling us to … and the aspects to which we should pay special
attention”.
Firstly, he mentioned the need to
“implement a change in our pastoral mentality”. We are no longer
in the era “in which the Church was the sole point of reference for
culture”. Previously, “as an authentic teacher, she was aware of
her responsibility to outline and to impose not only cultural forms
but also values”. He continued, “Today we are no longer the only
ones who produce culture, nor are we the first or the most listened
to. We are therefore in need of a change in pastoral mentality, but
not a 'relativist pastoral'”, that in its wish to be part of the
cultural mix, “loses its evangelical perspective, leaving humanity
to its own devices and freed from God's hand. No, this is the path of
relativism, the easy route. This cannot be considered as pastoral
ministry! He who acts in this way is not truly interested in man, but
instead leaves him to the mercy of two equally grave dangers:
concealing both Jesus, and the truth of man himself, from him – a
way that leads humanity to solitude and death”. Therefore, the Pope
added, “we need to have the courage to carry out an evangelising
pastoral ministry, bold and without fear, as men, women, families and
the various groups that inhabit the city expect from us, and need for
their lives, the Good News that is Jesus and His Gospel”.
As a second challenge, he emphasised
“dialogue with multiculturality” and the need for pastoral
dialogue without relativism, that does not negotiate its own
Christian identity, but that instead seeks to reach the heart of
others, of those different to ourselves, and to sow the Gospel there.
We need a contemplative attitude, that without denying the
contribution of the different sciences in understanding the urban
phenomenon – these contributions are important – seeks to
discover the foundation of cultures, that in their deepest core are
always open to and thirst for God”. To face this challenge, Francis
underlined that it would help us greatly to know the “invisible
cities, the groups or human territories that are identified by their
symbols, languages, rites and ways of narrating life”.
“The religiosity of the people” was
the third point he focused on. “We must discover, in the
religiosity of our populations, the authentic religious substratum,
that in many cases is Christian and Catholic. We must not fail to
recognise, or regard with disdain, this experience of God that,
although at times dispersed or mixed with other things, needs to be
discovered and not constructed. He we find the semina Verbi sown by
the Spirit of the Lord”. The Pope also commented on the many
migrants and poor people who fill our cities, “pilgrims of life, in
search of salvation”, who pose a “dual challenge”: that of
“being hospitable to the poor and migrants, not generally the case
in the city, which pushes them away, and of recognising the value of
their faith”. “The urban poor”, who constitute the fourth point
with which the Holy Father concluded his discourse, are “excluded
and discarded. The Church cannot ignore their cry, nor can she enter
into the game of unjust, mean and self-serving systems that seek to
render them invisible”.
The Pope made two proposals for facing
these challenges: to reach out to encounter God, “Who lives in the
cities and in the poor”, to facilitate the encounter of others with
God, making the Sacraments accessible, and to work towards a
Samaritan Church, “with concrete witness of mercy and tenderness
that endeavours to be present in the existential and poor
peripheries, acting directly on the social subconscious, producing
guidance and meaning for city life”.
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