Milan, Italy, Mar 25, 2017 / 06:31 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During his daytrip to Milan Saturday, Pope Francis told the diocese’s priests and religious not to fear the challenges that come with their ministry nor the increasing number of empty convents, urging them instead to focus on the core of their mission: bringing Christ to his people.
“Our congregations were not born to be the mass, but a bit of salt and yeast which would have given their own contribution so that the mass grows; so that the People of God have that ‘condiment’ they were missing,” the Pope said March 25.
He noted that for many years in the past, congregations moved forward with the idea that they needed to “occupy spaces” more than launching new processes and projects.
The perception then, he said, was that “ideas (or our impossibility to change) were more important than reality; or that the part (our small part or vision of the world) was superior to the whole Church.”
But today’s reality serves as a challenge, and “invites us to again be a bit of yeast and a bit of salt,” he said, asking “Can you imagine a meal with too much salt? Or a pasta that’s totally fermented? No one would eat it, no one could digest it.”
“I’ve never seen a pizzamaker use a kilo of yeast and a gram of flour” to make the dough, Francis said, and urged religious to “listen to reality, to open ourselves to the ‘mass,’ to the Holy People of God, to the entire Church.”
Pope Francis spoke to priests and religious inside Milan’s cathedral of St. Mary of the Nativity during his March 25 daytrip to the city.
He kicked off the visit by stopping by the “White Houses” high-rise complex in the eastern quarter of the city, an area marked by acute poverty where many migrants, including Muslim families, live. He then headed directly to Milan’s cathedral where he met with the priests and religious.
<blockquote class=”twitter-video” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Up-close view of a papal blessing to some small pilgrims in <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Milan?src=hash”>#Milan</a> via <a href=”https://twitter.com/andygag”>@andygag</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PopeFrancis?src=hash”>#PopeFrancis</a> <a href=”https://t.co/lEiFe59PCE”>pic.twitter.com/lEiFe59PCE</a></p>— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) <a href=”https://twitter.com/cnalive/status/845563394254082048″>March 25, 2017</a></blockquote>
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The Pope took questions from three members of the audience, including Ursuline sister Mother M. Paola Paganoni, parish priest Fr. Gabriele Gioia and Robert Crespi, one of the diocese’s 143 permanent deacons.
Instead of taking notes and giving an entirely off-the-cuff speech as usual during his Q&A sessions, this time Francis decided to follow a written text due to the day’s full schedule, deviating to add a few lines here and there.
The question on numbers was posed by Sr. Paganoni, who asked the Pope how to be a prophetic sign in modern society, and to which peripheries they should go, given that religious are small in number and constitute a “minority” in the Church.
In response, the Pope not only told the nun to not fret about numbers, but he also cautioned against the feeling of “resignation,” which he said can frequently creep up when looking at how few they are.
“Without realizing it, each time that we think or see that we are few, or in many cases elderly, we experience the weight, the fragility more than the splendor, and our spirit begins to corrode from resignation,” he said.
In turn, resignation can lead to the spiritual sin – also called a “disease” – of acedia, about which the Fathers of the Church issued sharp warnings since it essentially leads a person into despair, indifference and apathy regarding the faith and one’s vocation.
“Few yes, a minority yes, elderly yes, but resigned no!” he said, explaining that the lines in this regard are fine, are can only be recognized by a process of self-reflection in front of the Lord.
“When resignation takes hold of us,” he said, “we live with the imagination of a glorious past which, far from awakening the original charism, increasingly surrounds us in a spiral of existential heaviness. Everything becomes heavier and difficult to lift up.”
He warned religious to stay away from this attitude, as well as the temptation to use the empty structures to get money by turning them into hotels or looking for other “human solutions” to the problem. Doing this, he said, “hinders or deprives us of joy.”
And while he said he can’t tell them which peripheries to go to, since that’s the job of the Holy Spirit, who inspired their original charism, Pope Francis urged religious to choose them well and reawaken “the hope spent and sapped by a society that has become insensitive to the pain of others.”
“Go and bring the ‘anointing’ of Christ,” he said, telling them never to forget “that when you put Jesus in the midst of your people, they find joy…only this will render our lives fruitful and will keep our hearts alive.”
In response to Crespi’s question on what contribution deacons can give to the Church, the Pope said they have “a lot to give,” specifically when it comes to managing the tensions and blessings of ministry and family life.
However, Francis also cautioned against viewing deacons as “half-priests and half-laity,” because in reality “they are neither here nor there.”
Looking at them in this way “does harm to us and does harm to them” and takes strength away from their vocation in the Church, he said, explaining that the deaconate “is a specific vocation, a family vocation that recalls service as one of the characteristic gifts of the people of God.”
“The deacon is – so to speak – the guardian of service in the Church,” Pope Francis said. Because of this, his specific mission consists of “reminding all of us that faith, in its various expressions – communitarian liturgy, personal prayer, different forms of charity – and in its various states of life – lay, clerical, familial – has an essential dimension of service.”
Speaking directly to the deacons, he said they are “a sacrament of service to God and to your brothers. A vocation which like all vocations is not only individual, but lived inside the family and with the family, inside the People of God and with the People of God.”
Francis also answered Fr. Gioia’s question on what can be done in order not lose the joy of evangelizing in the face of challenges such as secularism and ministering to a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic flock with different religions.
In his response, the Pope said we shouldn’t be afraid of challenges, because they are “a sign of a living faith, of a living community that seeks its Lord and has eyes and hearts opened.”
Rather, what we must fear instead is “a faith without challenges, a faith believed to be complete, as if everything has been said and realized,” because without challenges, there is a danger that our faith becomes “an ideology.”
The Pope also spoke of the importance of recognizing the richness of the differences in the Church throughout its history, explaining that “the Church is one in a multifarious experience.”
Although there can also be “horrors” and errors in the ways some interpret religion, he stressed the need to separate and distinguish between the “luminous aspects and the dark aspects” of each.
He also cautioned against confusing unity with uniformity and plurality with pluralism, saying that in both cases “what is being sought is to reduce the tension and remove the conflict or ambivalence to which we are subjected as human being.”
Finally, the Pope in his last point to the priest emphasized the need for pastors to offer better formation in discernment, particularly to youth.
“The culture of abundance to which we are subjected offers a horizon of many possibilities, presenting them as valid and good,” he said, noting that today’s youth are exposed to a constant “zapping” of information.
“Whether we like it or not, it’s a world in which they are inserted and it’s our duty as pastors to help them pass through this world,” he said, explaining that because of this, “it’s good to teach them to discern, so that they have the tools and elements which help them to walk the path of life without extinguishing the Holy Spirit which is in them.”
After his audience with priests and religious, Pope Francis led pilgrims gathered outside the cathedral in praying the Angelus before heading to the city’s Casa Circondariale di San Vittore prison, which in 2012 held 1,700 detainees.
At the prison, the Pope is slated to greet employees and police officers who work at the facility before greeting the inmates themselves. He is then expected to have lunch with 100 of prisoners before heading to Milan’s Parco di Monza to celebrate Mass and meet with youth after.
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Don’t worry Angelo! Francis will have you out in no time! Unless you happen to have conservative or traditional leanings. In that case, good luck in the big house.
To be sure, there were several stupid business dealings, like London. But where was the theft? And didn’t the Pope approve everything?
Will we ever know where the millions went in Australia? Cardinal Pell deserved to know. What a mess.
“Loans” to family members that didn’t have to be paid back under the rationale that it would be good for the local economies where they would spend the money. Sort of like Obamanomics.
Where do you send a Cardinal to jail?
A different angle on the story: prisons and apartments. Francis has broken with his predecessors who, as Bishops of Rome, used to celebrate Holy Thursday Evening Mass for the diocese in his cathedral, St. John Lateran. Francis has delegated that job to a substitute while he does his “peripheries” thing in assorted Roman jails. Except in 2021, when he celebrated that Mass in Becciu’s apartment (in the middle of his trial). So, maybe Becciu can serve his “sentence” under “house arrest,” “accompanied” to his apartment (unless the Pope kicks him out) by the Pope who insists on living in a hotel room. Maybe we had a preview of what “peripheral accompaniment” of a poor Cardinal means?
$11K fine for a cardinal who apparently lost millions? Good deal. Papal economics?
From From 10 Vatican City Facts You Didn’t Know:
Excerpt:
2. Vatican City Has No Prison
Vatican City is likely the only nation on Earth to not have a prison. The country does have a few cells for pre-trial detention. Those convicted and sentenced to imprisonment serve time in Italian prisons as per the Lateran Treaty. The costs for imprisonment are covered by the Vatican government.
P.S.: Will Becciu be removed from the College of Cardinals while he does his time? After all, Francis insists that sexual sins are not necessarily the most serious (which, in one sense, may be true), yet he laicized McCarrick.
I am growing convinced the Polish National Catholics under Hodur, in advocating for trusteeship, were right. In a normal, democratic society (e.g., Western societies where the state’s reach into the Church is limited) there should be clear lines of separation between finance and power, not the “corporate sole” nonsense that allows Bishops to do whatever they want with the money of the People of God. Require an accountability board the majority of whose members are NOT episcopally removable (at least immediately) to approve expenditures. THAT would (a) create financial transparency AND (b) end “clericalism” by taking away a significant clerical prerogative: unlimited financial decision-making. Next time some bishop babbles about “reform” and “declericalization as Pope Francis urges” ask him (and Francis) whether they’d be willing to sign on to this financial divestment. If you can’t get a “yes” or “no” (as opposed to qualificatiosn and equivocations), call out the hot air.
The answer is not schismatic Polish National Catholic-style lay trusteeship, especially with today’s vast majority of liberal and heretical Catholics-in-name-only who do not even recognize the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. If one wants a sure recipe for disaster that is it. The answer is rather holy, orthodox, and traditional Catholic bishops and priests whose love is for Christ Crucified, not t
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That includes absolute financial power. Ask the Apostolic Treasurer, Judas. Episcopal ordination does not remove those temptations.
There’s no need for the bishop to be the sole agent who disposes of Church’s funds. If the “People of God” are the Church, there’s no reason bishops should not have to convince other people to fund their projects. They may have total responsibility in teaching. That does not imply “one signature is enough” on checks.
Yes, let’s give “financial power” to the holy fornicating, shacking-up, contracepting, aborting, pro-homosexual, and transsexual “People of God” who every recent CARA survey shows are overwhelmingly the majority of modern American “Catholics”. Let’s have Paul and Nancy Pelosi and Joe and Jill Biden as the Apostolic Treasurers. Let’s add another downward spiral to the catastrophic state of the Catholic Church. Let patron saint be Judas since he is already their model.
Yes, I agree that establishing trusteeship is a big part of what would be an “actual reform in the Church.”
The fact that it doesn’t exist, and is not being vigorously pursued, puts the Church into the hands of frauds and thieves.
All the talk of “the reform” by the sitting Pontiff and his Cardinals and Bishops is rubbish until the true reform indicated by actions like trusteeship arrangements.
We continue to hear “poverty-pimping” about the Church’s “preferential option for the poor.”
It was voiced by “His Eminence” Beccui himself, on the night he stood on the balcony in Rome next to the Pontiff Francis, moments before his introduction to the world, he reminded the new Pontiff to “remember the poor.”
These characters are the supreme carnival…
Speaking of prosecuting the criminally stupid, did this show trial cost a million? How can anyone donate to this pontificate?
At least Cardinal Becciu will have housing and an assured means of sustaining his human needs. That’s more than Francis afforded Cardinal Burke. Maybe the best punishment for Becciu would be to kick him out into the streets, strip him of his financial support and tell him to get out of Rome and return to wherever he came from. I do have in mind one other bishop who ought to vacate the Vatican precincts.
Having been born on the island of Sardinia, Beccui likely could exist substantively on a small island. Where is there a small island large enough to accommodate a table, toilet, and a tall banana tree or two? Bergoglio could visit the island’s periphery, maybe even keep Beccui perpetual company. Such digs could well be their best before Someone requires the two to move one last time.
You’ve made my day!
What has become of the millions and the apartment in London?
Do these dignitaries pack them for their post-mortem trip?
Vanitas vanitaties and omnia sunt vanitas.
The Pope approved these stooges. They should all go to jail for not buying ETFs! A fool and his money are soon parted…🤦🏼♂️ (All this episcopal incompetence reminds me of how the Texas Bishops lobby in Austin, save Strickland…)
“Prosecutors allege the second broker, Gianluigi Torzi, hoodwinked the Vatican by maneuvering to secure full control of the building that he relinquished only when the Vatican paid him off 15 million euros (with the Pope’s approval!)… a British judge rejected Vatican requests to seize Torzi’s assets — it was a negotiated exit from a legally binding contract…Torzi’s whereabouts weren’t immediately known.”
Have they looked for Torzi in the Cayman Islands? Maybe he paid Cecilia Marogna to join him for her “intelligence services?” Who knows, maybe they are with Australian friends, trying to free a nun on Seven Mile Beach?
What do you get for misleading the faithful into heresy? Mortal sin?
Jesus came to save the sinner, lest we forget.
There is that warning about leading the little ones to sin and a millstone would have been a better option
If the result is unfair may the Holy Father catch it in time and commute the sentence or quash the conviction.
This is beyond disgraceful, whoever is responsible – Becciu or Parra.
Has there been any comment from the Pope about this?