Pope Francis to issue apostolic exhortation on holiness, “Gaudete et exsultate”

Subtitled “on the call to holiness in the contemporary world”, the exhortation will be presented April 9 by Archbishop Angelo De Donatis, vicar general of the Diocese of Rome and archpriest of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.

Pope Francis gestures during his general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican April 4. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Vatican City, Apr 5, 2018 / 10:07 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis will next week publish an apostolic exhortation on holiness titled Gaudete et exsultate, or “Rejoice and be glad”, the Vatican announced Thursday.

Subtitled “on the call to holiness in the contemporary world”, the exhortation will be presented April 9 by Archbishop Angelo De Donatis, vicar general of the Diocese of Rome and archpriest of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.

Italian journalist Gianni Valente and Paola Bignardi, former president of Catholic Action Italy, will also  speak at the presentation.

Gaudete et exsultate will be the third apostolic exhortation issued by Pope Francis. In 2016 he issued Amoris laetitia, on love in the family, and in 2013 Evangelii gaudium, on the proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world.

An apostolic exhortation is one form of the ordinary teaching authority of the Pope. Through an exhortation, the Pope conveys a message to faithful about a particular area relevant to living out the Catholic faith.

An apostolic exhortation is often written as a follow-up document to a Synod of Bishops, as was the case for Amoris laetitia.

Gaudete et exsultate follows just a little more than a month behind the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s March 1 letter to bishops on certain aspects of Christian salvation, Placuit Deo, which refers to the errors of Pelagianism and Gnosticism in helping to explain the threat of the errors Pope Francis has called “new Pelagianism” and “new Gnosticism.”

According to Placuit Deo, the new Pelagianism is an “individualism centered on the autonomous subject [which] tends to see the human person as a being whose sole fulfilment depends only on his or her own strength.”

The document cites a 2013 address of Pope Francis to explain that the new Gnosticism “presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the material universe, in which traces of the provident hand of the Creator are no longer found, but only a reality deprived of meaning, foreign to the fundamental identity of the person, and easily manipulated by the interests of man.”

In his latest exhortation, Pope Francis will likely expound on these modern errors giving guidance on how to avoid them and how to achieve holiness in the modern age.


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15 Comments

  1. Sounds like the pope has been reading the Opus Dei 101 documents. He’s run out of ramblings and he’s channeling modern saints now.

  2. Would rather wait for another pontiff to write an apostolic exhortation on holiness. In fact, the People of God could use one on holiness and wisdom. Pope Francis lack sufficient credibility since he is too judgmental toward traditional Catholics, indicating some lack of humility, and unwisely gives aid and comfort to enemies of the Church all too frequently. Developing a reputation for sowing confusion and not cleaning up after your own messes will make it hard for many of the faithful to not tune him out or otherwise willingly cite his words even if the content of the proposed apostolic exhortation proves laudable.

  3. Is this document the result of a groundswell of demand by the faithful… because the words of Christ just don’t cut it?
    One weakness of the post Vatican II media watching the Church now… period… is this idea that Popes should constantly write, travel or talk…or all three with Francis…because the media wants travel or books or great sayings.
    And the recent Popes like the travel/author part….because it’s easier than cleaning house…admin work…you know…ruling. There is a thing called global administrative work…checking what can be done about pro abortion speakers at Catholic colleges…why are there night coed visitation rights at Catholic colleges while some Catholic colleges have sizable hookup rate percentages per the Newman Society website….are there lgbt clubs on campuses that affirm gay sex while the Holy Spirit condemns such in Romans 1:26-27. Popes should be cleaning house worldwide…not just Francis. St. John Paul II was writing TOB for months while sexual abuse was simultaneously taking place against children in some cases. Irony at its maximum. Benedict wrote too much on the saints. We have Catholic authors trying to make a living for their families to do that. When will we again have Popes who don’t turn the office into a writer in residence stint. There should be nothing untoward at any Catholic colleges if Popes we’re doing their essential job of ruling the worldwide Church a sufficient percent of each day. Frankly Benedict quit when the admin jobs had grown up to his ears while he was writing.

  4. Given everything we have seen, read, and observed over the past five years, a reasonable forecast is that it will equate holiness with secular left-wing political shibboleths, including open borders, gun control, climate-change activism, the abolition of the death penalty and lifetime imprisonment, the socialism of central planners, the “positive aspects” of homosexuality and pan-sexual gender ideology, and the smashing of rigid, traditional “idols of truth”. Let us not forget that this pope is explicitly on record as declaring that Communists. In other words, we should prepare ourselves for yet another anti-magisterial “apostolic exhortation”.

  5. Gaudete et Exultate in which he will likely decree that the new theological virtues are tolerance, diversity and inclusion. That the new cardinal virtues are accompaniment, flexibility, indifference and not judging.

    Be glad and exult because Francis says there is no hell, or there is, but no one goes there, or they do, but not forever… Gay commitment rites and transgender rebaptisms – just as long as you don’t call it marriage…

    So, Go therefore into all the world and build bridges, not walls.

  6. Perhaps he would care to “exhort” confrere James Martin “SJ” to cease exhorting sodomy?
    Credence spent poorly is not easily regained.

    • I suppose that is why Pope Bergoglio chose the name of a 13th century saint named Francis of Assisi whose life of absolute poverty is so widely followed in the “new times” of today.

  7. The title of this Apostolic Exhortation is beyond ironic in the mouth of a pipe who praises the destruction of the Church’s “idols of truth” and claims that the divine commandments of Jesus on the indissolubility of marriage and exceptionless negative moral norms are merely “ideals” that are impossible as a practical matter:

    “11 beati estis cum maledixerint vobis et persecuti vos fuerint et dixerint omne malum adversum vos mentientes propter me 12 gaudete et exultate quoniam merces vestra copiosa est in caelis sic enim persecuti sunt prophetas qui fuerunt ante vos. (Mt. 5:11-12)

  8. What’s the under/over on whether Francis’ main themes of holiness will be dialogue, accompanying, openness, love for migrants, climate change, etc., blah, blah, blah. The Church is being destroyed from within and Francis is leading the charge.

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