Vatican City, 7 February 2014 (VIS) –
As the canonisation of Blessed John Paul II approaches, Pope Francis
today received in audience the bishops of the Polish Episcopal
Conference at the end of their five-yearly “ad limina” visit. He
referred to the future saint as “a great Pastor who … guides us
from Heaven, and reminds us of the importance of spiritual and
pastoral communion between bishops”, and invited the former Pope's
compatriots to ensure that nothing and no-one may bring divisions
between them, as they are “called to build communion and peace,
rooted in fraternal love, and to offer an encouraging example to
all”, bringing “the strength of hope” to the Polish people.
The conversations that the Bishop of
Rome has held in these days with the Polish prelates have confirmed
that the Church in Poland “has great potential for faith, prayer,
charity and Christian practice”, and that this “favours the
Christian formation of the people, motivated and convinced practice,
and the availability of laypeople and religious to collaborate
actively in ecclesial and social structures”. However, there has
been a certain decline in various aspects of Christian life, and this
requires “discernment, and a search for underlying reasons and
methods for facing new challenges, such as, for example, the idea of
freedom without limits, hostile tolerance or indeed distrust of the
truth, or resistance to the Church's legitimate opposition to
dominant relativism”.
The family, “the place where one
learns to live in difference and to belong to others, and where
parents transmit faith to their children”, should occupy a central
position in the ordinary pastoral care of bishops, also because
“nowadays marriage tends to be viewed as a form of mere emotional
satisfaction that can be constructed in any way or modified at will.
Unfortunately this vision also influences the mentality of
Christians, promoting a tendency towards divorce or separation.
Pastors are called upon to ask themselves how they can help those who
experience this situation, so that they are not excluded from God's
mercy, from the fraternal love of other Christians and the care of
the Church for their salvation; on how to help them not to abandon
their faith and to enable them to raise their children in the
fullness of Christian experience”. In this respect, he commented on
the need for bishops to consider how to improve the preparation of
young people for marriage, so that they are able to “discover the
beauty of this union, based on love and responsibility”, and how to
“help families to live and appreciate not only moments of joy, but
also those of pain and weakness”.
In view of the next World Youth Day,
which will be held in Krakow in 2016, the Pope turned his thoughts to
the young “who, along with the elderly, are the hope of the Church”
and to whom today's technological world “offers new possibilities
for communication, but at the same time reduces interpersonal
relationships based on direct contact, on the exchange of values and
shared experiences. However, in the hearts of the young there is the
yearning for something deeper, which allows their personalities to
bloom fully. We must work towards meeting this wish”. A good
opportunity, is offered by catechesis, which reaches the majority of
Polish schoolchildren, who reach a good level of understanding of the
truth of faith. “The Christian religion, however, is not an
abstract science, but rather the essential knowledge of Christ, a
personal relationship with God Who is love”.
The third theme of the Pope's address
was the vocation to the priesthood and to consecrated life. After
commenting that there are many Polish priests who exercise their
ministry in the local Churches and also abroad and in missions, he
praised the universities and faculties of theology throughout the
country which “provide good intellectual and pastoral preparation”
which must always be accompanied by “human and spiritual
formation”.
In priestly ministry, “the light of
witness can be obscured or hidden under a bushel if there is a lack
of missionary spirit, of the wish to go out to the peripheries, with
an ever-renewed missionary conversion to seek or encounter those who
await Christ's Good News. This apostolic style also demands a spirit
of poverty, of abandonment, to allow freedom of proclamation and
sincere witness to charity”. With regard to vocations to
consecrated life, especially in woman, “it is worrying to see a
decline in numbers of those joining religious congregations, even in
Poland: a complex phenomenon, with multiple causes. I hope that
female religious Institutes may continue to be, in a way suited to
our times, privileged spaces for the affirmation and human and
spiritual growth of women. May religious women be ready to face tasks
and missions, even those which are difficult and demanding, which
bring to the fore their intellectual, emotional and spiritual
capacities, their personal talents and charisms”.
The Pope concluded by encouraging care
for the poor as, “in Poland too, despite current economic
development in the country, there are many who are in need,
unemployed, homeless, sick, and marginalised, and also many families
– especially larger family units – who do not have sufficient
means to live and to educate their children. Be close to them! I know
how much the Church does in Poland in this field, demonstrating great
generosity not only at a national level but also in other countries
throughout the world. I thank you and your communities for your work.
Continue to encourage your priests, religious and all faithful to
have the 'imagination of charity', and to practice it at all times.
And do not forget those who for various reasons leave the country in
search of a better life elsewhere. Their growing numbers and their
needs perhaps require greater attention on the part of the Episcopal
Conference. Accompany them with the suitable pastoral care, so that
they may conserve the faith and religious traditions of the Polish
people”.