At 12:30pm local time today, in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in audience those who are participating in the 38th Convention of Caritas from the Dioceses of Italy, which is taking place at the Fraterna Domus (Sacrofano, Rome) from April 18 to 21, focused on the theme: Merciful like the Father ... Be merciful, as your Father is merciful (Lk 6:36).
Dear brothers and sisters,
I welcome you at the conclusion of the work of your National Convention and I affectionately greet you all. I cordially greet Cardinal Francesco Montenegro, President of Caritas Italy, and I thank him for the words he has offered me in the name of all who are here. Your meeting takes place 45 years after the birth of this ecclesial organization, which Blessed Paul VI greatly desired; and he wanted it to have a pastoral and an educative character. In 1972, on the occasion of the first national meeting with Caritas, he confided this precious mandate to you: Sensitize local Churches and individual members of the faithful to the sense and the duty of charity in ways that are suitable for our times (Insegnamenti X, 1972, 989). Today, with renewed faithfulness to the gospel and to the mandate you received, you walk in new paths of comparison and verification in order to deepen and to best inform all people about efforts that have been undertaken and that are being developed.
Your teaching mission, which is always directed toward communion in the Church is a service with wide horizons, which requires of you the commitment of concrete love toward every human being, with a preferential option for the poor, in and through whom Jesus himself asks for our help and our closeness (cf Matt 25:35-40). A love that is expressed in gestures and signs, that represent an important educational task for the Caritas community - as my predecessor, Benedict XVI pointed out, and then added: My wish for you is that you will discover how to cultivate the best quality of work that is possible. Make them capable of speaking, concerning yourself above all with the interior motivations that animate them, and the quality of the testimony that is given. They are works that are hidden in faith. They are works of the Church, expressions of our commitment to those who make the most effort. They are pedagogical actions, for they help the poor to grow in their dignity, the Christian communities to walk in the footsteps of Christ, and civil society to consciously assume their obligations (Speech to Caritas Italia on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of their foundation, 24 November 2011; Insegnamenti VII, 2, 2011, 776).
Faced with the challenges and the contradictions of our times, Caritas has the difficult but fundamental task of ensuring that charitable activity becomes a commitment for all of us, that is to say that the entire Christian community becomes the subject of charity. This therefore, is the principal object of your existence and your activity: to be motivated and animated so that the entire community can grow in charity and be able to find new avenues to bring us closer to those who are poor, so that we will be able to read and to confront the situations that oppress millions of our brothers - in Italy, in Europe and throughout the world. In this regard, the role that Caritas plays in promoting and training others for the diverse expressions of volunteering is particularly relevant - volunteers who are called to invest time, resources and abilities to involve the whole community in the commitment toward ongoing and growing solidarity. Equally essential is your task of motivating others to face civic institutions and to encourage adequate legislation in favour of the common good and the care for those who are most in need; a commitment that is seen in the constant offering of opportunities and instruments for the development of adequate knowledge and constructive approaches to situations.
Faced with global challenges that sow fear, guilt, financial speculation - even concerning food -, environmental degradation and war, it is necessary, in addition to your daily work on the ground to continue your efforts to educate others toward the respectful and fraternal encounter between cultures and civilizations, and toward the care for creation for the sake of an integral ecology. Caritas Italy is also faithful to its statutory mandate. I encourage you to never grow tired of promoting, with tenacity and patient perseverance, communities that have a passion for dialogue, in order that they might experience conflicts in a gospel fashion, without neglecting them but finding in them more opportunities for growth and for reconciliation: this is the peace that Christ won for us, and which we are now invited to share. Your strength comes from a desire to trace the causes of poverty, to seek to remove them: the effort to prevent marginalization; to affect the mechanisms that generate injustice; to work against any sinful structure. For this purpose, it is your task to teach individuals and groups so that they can lead lifestyles that promote awareness, so that all people will truly feel responsible for others, beginning in parishes: this is the precious and extensive work of parish Caritas groups, which continue to spread and multiply throughout the country.
I also want to encourage you to continue in your commitment to remain close to immigrants. The phenomenon of migration, which today presents critical aspects that need to be managed with organic and far-reaching policies remains an asset and a resource from various points of view. Thus your work is precious, as well as an attitude of solidarity, a tendency to favour choices that aim toward integration between strangers and Italian citizens, providing people with basic cultural and professional instruments that are suitable for the complexity of the phenomenon and its particular needs.
The witness of charity becomes authentic and credible when it engages all the moments and the relationships of life, but it is born and most at home in the family, the domestic Church. The family is Charity by its very makeup because God himself has made it that way: the soul of the family and of her mission is love. The merciful love that - as I recalled in my post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia - can accompany, discern and integrate situations of frailty. The most complete answers to many discomforts can be offered by the very families who, overcoming the temptation to short-sighted and episodic solidarity, at times purely out of necessity, chose to collaborate between themselves and with all other support services in a given territory, to offer resources on a daily basis, and how many beautiful examples we have of this reality in our communities!
With full trust in the presence of the risen Christ and with the courage that comes from the Holy Spirit, may you continue along the way free of fear and discovering perspectives that are ever new in your pastoral commitment, to strengthen styles and motivations, and thus respond even better to the Lord who comes to meet us in the faces and the stories of our brothers and sisters most in need. They are at the door of our hearts, of our communities, waiting for someone to respond to their discrete and insistent rapping: waiting for charity, the merciful caress of the Father, through the hands of the Church. A caress that expresses the tenderness and closeness of the Father. In today's world, which is complex and inter-connected, your mercy must be attentive and informative; concrete and competent, capable of analysis, research, study and reflection; personal but also communitarian; credible by virtue of a coherence that bears witness to the gospel and, at the same time, organized and trained to provide more precise and targeted services; responsible, coordinated, capable of alliances and innovation; delicate and welcoming, full of significant relationships; open to all, delicately inviting the small and the poor of the world to take an active part in the life of the community, which has as its culminating point the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist. For the poor are the insistent proposition that God presents to our Church in order that she may grow in love and in faithfulness. Communion with Christ in the Mass finds its coherent expression in the encounter with this same Jesus who is present in the smallest of our brothers.
This is your, our embrace, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary and of Blessed Paul VI. I bless you and accompany you in prayer. And you also, I ask you, pray for me! Thank you.
Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for the meeting with members of Caritas
from dioceses throughout Italy
Dear brothers and sisters,
I welcome you at the conclusion of the work of your National Convention and I affectionately greet you all. I cordially greet Cardinal Francesco Montenegro, President of Caritas Italy, and I thank him for the words he has offered me in the name of all who are here. Your meeting takes place 45 years after the birth of this ecclesial organization, which Blessed Paul VI greatly desired; and he wanted it to have a pastoral and an educative character. In 1972, on the occasion of the first national meeting with Caritas, he confided this precious mandate to you: Sensitize local Churches and individual members of the faithful to the sense and the duty of charity in ways that are suitable for our times (Insegnamenti X, 1972, 989). Today, with renewed faithfulness to the gospel and to the mandate you received, you walk in new paths of comparison and verification in order to deepen and to best inform all people about efforts that have been undertaken and that are being developed.
Your teaching mission, which is always directed toward communion in the Church is a service with wide horizons, which requires of you the commitment of concrete love toward every human being, with a preferential option for the poor, in and through whom Jesus himself asks for our help and our closeness (cf Matt 25:35-40). A love that is expressed in gestures and signs, that represent an important educational task for the Caritas community - as my predecessor, Benedict XVI pointed out, and then added: My wish for you is that you will discover how to cultivate the best quality of work that is possible. Make them capable of speaking, concerning yourself above all with the interior motivations that animate them, and the quality of the testimony that is given. They are works that are hidden in faith. They are works of the Church, expressions of our commitment to those who make the most effort. They are pedagogical actions, for they help the poor to grow in their dignity, the Christian communities to walk in the footsteps of Christ, and civil society to consciously assume their obligations (Speech to Caritas Italia on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of their foundation, 24 November 2011; Insegnamenti VII, 2, 2011, 776).
Faced with the challenges and the contradictions of our times, Caritas has the difficult but fundamental task of ensuring that charitable activity becomes a commitment for all of us, that is to say that the entire Christian community becomes the subject of charity. This therefore, is the principal object of your existence and your activity: to be motivated and animated so that the entire community can grow in charity and be able to find new avenues to bring us closer to those who are poor, so that we will be able to read and to confront the situations that oppress millions of our brothers - in Italy, in Europe and throughout the world. In this regard, the role that Caritas plays in promoting and training others for the diverse expressions of volunteering is particularly relevant - volunteers who are called to invest time, resources and abilities to involve the whole community in the commitment toward ongoing and growing solidarity. Equally essential is your task of motivating others to face civic institutions and to encourage adequate legislation in favour of the common good and the care for those who are most in need; a commitment that is seen in the constant offering of opportunities and instruments for the development of adequate knowledge and constructive approaches to situations.
Faced with global challenges that sow fear, guilt, financial speculation - even concerning food -, environmental degradation and war, it is necessary, in addition to your daily work on the ground to continue your efforts to educate others toward the respectful and fraternal encounter between cultures and civilizations, and toward the care for creation for the sake of an integral ecology. Caritas Italy is also faithful to its statutory mandate. I encourage you to never grow tired of promoting, with tenacity and patient perseverance, communities that have a passion for dialogue, in order that they might experience conflicts in a gospel fashion, without neglecting them but finding in them more opportunities for growth and for reconciliation: this is the peace that Christ won for us, and which we are now invited to share. Your strength comes from a desire to trace the causes of poverty, to seek to remove them: the effort to prevent marginalization; to affect the mechanisms that generate injustice; to work against any sinful structure. For this purpose, it is your task to teach individuals and groups so that they can lead lifestyles that promote awareness, so that all people will truly feel responsible for others, beginning in parishes: this is the precious and extensive work of parish Caritas groups, which continue to spread and multiply throughout the country.
I also want to encourage you to continue in your commitment to remain close to immigrants. The phenomenon of migration, which today presents critical aspects that need to be managed with organic and far-reaching policies remains an asset and a resource from various points of view. Thus your work is precious, as well as an attitude of solidarity, a tendency to favour choices that aim toward integration between strangers and Italian citizens, providing people with basic cultural and professional instruments that are suitable for the complexity of the phenomenon and its particular needs.
The witness of charity becomes authentic and credible when it engages all the moments and the relationships of life, but it is born and most at home in the family, the domestic Church. The family is Charity by its very makeup because God himself has made it that way: the soul of the family and of her mission is love. The merciful love that - as I recalled in my post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia - can accompany, discern and integrate situations of frailty. The most complete answers to many discomforts can be offered by the very families who, overcoming the temptation to short-sighted and episodic solidarity, at times purely out of necessity, chose to collaborate between themselves and with all other support services in a given territory, to offer resources on a daily basis, and how many beautiful examples we have of this reality in our communities!
With full trust in the presence of the risen Christ and with the courage that comes from the Holy Spirit, may you continue along the way free of fear and discovering perspectives that are ever new in your pastoral commitment, to strengthen styles and motivations, and thus respond even better to the Lord who comes to meet us in the faces and the stories of our brothers and sisters most in need. They are at the door of our hearts, of our communities, waiting for someone to respond to their discrete and insistent rapping: waiting for charity, the merciful caress of the Father, through the hands of the Church. A caress that expresses the tenderness and closeness of the Father. In today's world, which is complex and inter-connected, your mercy must be attentive and informative; concrete and competent, capable of analysis, research, study and reflection; personal but also communitarian; credible by virtue of a coherence that bears witness to the gospel and, at the same time, organized and trained to provide more precise and targeted services; responsible, coordinated, capable of alliances and innovation; delicate and welcoming, full of significant relationships; open to all, delicately inviting the small and the poor of the world to take an active part in the life of the community, which has as its culminating point the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist. For the poor are the insistent proposition that God presents to our Church in order that she may grow in love and in faithfulness. Communion with Christ in the Mass finds its coherent expression in the encounter with this same Jesus who is present in the smallest of our brothers.
This is your, our embrace, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary and of Blessed Paul VI. I bless you and accompany you in prayer. And you also, I ask you, pray for me! Thank you.
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