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Jan03

“Wake up the world!” Quotable quotes from Pope Francis’ meeting with religious

posted by Creator Mundi

By Carol Glatz

Pope Francis at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square Dec. 18. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

VATICAN CITY — Today’s article in the Italian Jesuit journal, La Civilta’ Cattolica, offers more fresh insight from Pope Francis into how men and women can live out religious and consecrate life more fully. As a member of the world’s largest order of religious men and as someone who served as head of the Jesuit province in Argentina, the pope’s insight is particularly valuable.

The article gives an in-depth account of the three-hour, closed-door informal meeting the pope had with 120 superiors general of men’s religious orders Nov. 29.

While you can access the full 17-page article in English, Spanish or Italian at the journal’s website, here is a sampling of some of our favorite excerpts (CNS translations of the original Italian).

Today’s religious men and women need to be prophetic, “capable of waking up the world,” of showing they are a special breed who “have something to say” to the world today.
“The church must be attractive. Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, acting, living! (Show) it’s possible to live differently in this world.”

A nun chatting with a woman on a street corner in Seville, Spain, Aug. 2013. (CNS photo/Marcelo del Pozo, Reuters)
They need to live and behave in a truly different way, recognizing one’s weakness and sins, but acting with “generosity, detachment, sacrifice, forgetting oneself in order to take care of others.”
“It’s necessary to spend time in real contact with the poor. For me this is really important: it’s necessary to know reality from experience, to dedicate time going to the periphery to truly know the situation and the life of the people.”
Without firsthand experience with people’s lives, “then one runs the risk of being abstract ideologues or fundamentalists and this is not healthy.”

Father Nestor Torres, a priest of the Chicago Archdiocese, working with young men and women at Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in Des Plaines, Ill., this 2012 file photo. (CNS photo/Karen Callaway, Catholic New World)
“Those who work with young people cannot limit themselves to saying things that are too ordered and structured like a treaty because these things glide over their heads. A new language is needed, a new way (Read More)
Source: http://cnsblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/wake-up-the-world-quotable-quotes-from-pope-francis-meeting-with-religious/

Posted by Creator Mundi in News