Vatican City, 18 April 2015 (VIS) –
“In this jubilee year that commemorates several events in the life
of the Church in Gabon, including the 170th anniversary of her
foundation, I wish to greet and encourage your priests, men and women
religious and other pastoral agents who collaborate with you, as well
as the lay faithful of your dioceses, whom I join in prayer and
thanksgiving”, writes the Holy Father in the discourse he handed
this morning to the bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Gabon, at
the end of their “ad Limina” visit.
“The courageous missionaries who
preached the Gospel in your land, in heroic conditions, and also the
first Christians of Gabon, who welcomed the Good News of salvation
with a generous heart and bore witness to it, often facing great
adversity, are the pioneers of your local Church. Their memory, their
zeal and their evangelical witness must never cease to inspire you in
your pastoral action, and constitute for the Church of Gabon the
source of a renewed commitment to the announcement of the Gospel, as
a message of peace, joy and salvation that liberates man from the
forces of evil to guide him to the Kingdom of God”.
“To carry out the ministry that has
been entrusted to you in each of your dioceses requires you to live
in authentic fraternity within your Episcopal Conference”, he
continues. “Fraternal collaboration must make it possible to
respond better to needs such as the challenges of the Church and to
assure, with a collegial spirit, service to the common good all
society. In this regard, you have recently taken the initiative of
establishing a day of prayer for your country. The Church thus shows
that she shares in the concerns of all Gabonese and that the
Christian message, far from deterring humanity from building an ever
more just and fraternal world, makes doing so a duty. The Centre for
Studes for Social Doctrine and Interreligious Dialogue, established
in 2011 in Libreville, also shows your concern for evangelising
customs and the socio-political realities of your country”.
“The unity of the presbytery with the
bishop is an example that gives the faithful the sense of the Church
as the family of God. This must be translated in particular into
great care to immunise them against the insidious danger of tribal
and ethnic discrimination, which are the very negation of the Gospel.
This spirit of communion is especially expressed in the fraternal
care that you dedicate to the life and the mission of your priests. …
The candidates to the priesthood also need … effective
accompaniment in the indispensable and complex process of the
discernment of vocations. This discernment and the formation of
seminarians must be anchored first to the Gospel, and then to the
true cultural values of their country, on the sense of honesty,
responsibility and the given word. … Men and women religious, who
since the founding of the Church in Gabon have displayed
extraordinary apostolic zeal in the service of the Gospel, are also
entitled to privileged and affectionate attention from you … that
may be manifested in constructive dialogue and permanent
collaboration at all levels with them, as well as in spiritual
closeness and the promotion of different charisms within your
dioceses”.
The bishop of Rome encourages the
prelates to continue in their efforts to “awaken in the laity the
sense of their Christian vocation, and to urge them to develop their
charisms in order to put them to the service of the Church and of
society. The Church is missionary by nature. … Therefore, the human
and Christian formation of the laity is an important way of
contributing to the work of the evangelisation and development of the
people, always endeavouring to adopt an 'outbound' approach towards
social peripheries. It is also necessary to present to the young the
true face of Christ, their friend and guide, so that they find in Him
a solid anchorage to resist ideologies and sects as well as the
illusions of a false modernity and the mirage of material wealth”.
“In this regard, it is important to
maintain the prestige of Catholic educational institutions in your
country, by way of a formation that is increasingly inspired by the
spirit of the Gospel. The 2001 Agreement between the Holy See and the
Gabonese Republic on the Status of Catholic Education offers valuable
support to the local Church, favouring the promotion of each and
every person, with a preferential option for the poorest. I encourage
you, therefore, not to hesitate in raising your voice to defend the
human person and the sacred nature of life”. The Holy Father
concludes, “In this time of preparation for the upcoming Synod of
Bishops on the family, I invite you to pray and to ask for prayer for
a good outcome, to better serve all families”.
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