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Pope Francis’ address to the Pontifical Pio College Latin America
Sala Clementina – Monday, November 28, 2022
I am happy, dear brothers and sisters, to be with all of you, members of the Pio Latin American College, today. I liked being greeted singing. I couldn’t answer them by singing because I sing for the ram, so it would have been a disaster. These years in which you are in Rome are a time of grace that the Lord grants you to deepen your formation, not only intellectually, academically, and to experience the richness and diversity of the universal Church.
Perhaps it is the richest; that richness and diversity.
This richness and diversity also characterizes our peoples of Latin America, where they will return to continue being shepherds of the flock that the Church entrusts to them.
Pastors of the people, and not state clergy. That’s a bit what vocation leads them to.
The first Christians also came from different peoples and cultures. And it was the Holy Spirit, who descended upon them, who caused them to have “one heart and one soul” (Acts 4:32), to speak the same language — the language of love — and to be disciples and missionaries of Jesus to the ends of the earth (cf. Mt 28:19). Thinking of Andrew the Apostle, whose feast we celebrate this Wednesday, I would like to dwell on these two terms: disciples and missionaries.
In John’s gospel we see that Andrew was one of Jesus’ first disciples.
Faced with his concern to know who the Master was, and his invitation: “Come and see” (Jn 1:39), he went, saw where he lived and stayed with him that day. And it was there that his life radically changed. Therefore, dear brothers, let us always renew, it will do us good, let us renew that encounter with the Lord, daily, let us share his Word, let us remain silent before him to see what he tells us, what he does, how he feels, how he is silent, how he loves. Let him be the “Word” in our lives and, if you will allow me the image, let him “conjugate” in us and through us, let him be Lord. Let us not prevent him from acting in our ministry in the first Person. May Jesus have an active voice in each of our decisions! We are His ministers, we belong to Him, and He called us to “be with Him.”
This is what it means to be disciples.
Andrew’s encounter with Jesus did not leave him calm and idle, but transformed him, and he was no longer the same as before, and he could only go and announce what he had lived. And the first one he found to tell him was his own brother Simon/Peter: “We have found the Messiah” (Jn 1:41), and he took him to Jesus. In this way, Andréw “premiered” as a missionary. And our brothers and sisters, especially those who have not yet experienced the Lord’s love and mercy, are also waiting for us to proclaim to them the Good News of Jesus and lead them to Him. To go out, to move, to bring the joy of the Gospel, that is to be missionaries.
Mark, in his Gospel, summarizes Jesus’ call to be disciples and missionaries.
In the third chapter we read that He called the apostles “to be with Him and to send them out to preach” (v. 14). To be with Jesus and go out to proclaim Him. Two verbs: “to be with” and “to go out”. That is the meaning of our life. It is a “round trip” path, which has Jesus as its point of departure and arrival. Let us not forget that “to be” with Jesus and to “go out” to proclaim him is also to be with the poor, with migrants, with the sick, with prisoners, with the smallest, with the most forgotten in society, and to share life with them and to proclaim to them God’s unconditional love. Because Jesus is present in these most vulnerable brothers and sisters, there He awaits us in a special way (cf. Mt 25:34-40).
And don’t forget to return to Him, every night, after a long day—but be careful, return to Him, not a cell phone screen. It hurts me a lot when I see a good hardworking priest get tired and forget to go to the tabernacle, and go to sleep because he is tired.
He is right, he has to sleep, but first he says hello. Don’t be rude… Or how many times do they escape on a cell phone screen? The cell phone screen fills us with things. Please don’t be addicted to that world of escape. Don’t be addicted. There are several steps that take away your strength. Be addicted to the encounter with Jesus, and He knows what we need and has a word to say to us on every occasion.
One thing I said there in passing is that you come back to be pastors of the People of God. Please never negotiate pastorality. Pastors of the People of God, not state clerics.
Do not fall into clericalism, which is one of the worst perversions.
Be very careful, clericalism is a form of spiritual worldliness.
Clericalism is distorting, it is corrupt, and it leads you to a corruption, a starched corruption, with your nose stopped, that separates you from the people, makes you forget the people from which you came.
Paul said to Timothy: “Remember your mother and your grandmother” (cf. 2 Tim:5-7), that is, go back to the roots, do not forget your mother and grandmother. I say that to each of you. Back to the flock from which we were taken… “I brought you from behind the flock”
(See. 2 Samuel: 7:8 ‘So now, say this to My servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be ruler over My people Israel).
Please, every time they become more “exquisite” in the true sense of the word, that is, (exquirere “to search out). ‘further away from the people’, every time they do that, they turn away from the grace of God and fall into the plague of clericalism.
Pastors of the people, not state clergy. Ask for the grace to know how to always be in front, in the middle and behind the people, involved with the people from whom Jesus took you.
And let us ask Our Lady of Guadalupe to help us on the path of “discipleship-apostolate” that configures us with her Son, to accompany us on that vital journey of “back and forth” that starts from Jesus to the brothers, to return with the brothers to meet Jesus.
Let us beg the Apostle Andrew to intercede for us.
And again, thank you for this visit. I wish you a good Roman way, take all the good things you can find in Rome, the others do not, leave them in Rome, which here will be responsible for carrying them forward, and please, do not forget to pray for me. Thank you
