Pope Benedict XVI discourse 2 Meeting with Bishops
(18 Mar 09 - RV) Pope Benedict XVI discourse 2 Meeting with Bishops: Dear Cardinal, Dear
Brother Bishops, This meeting with the Pastors of the Catholic Church in Cameroon
gives me great joy. I thank the President of your Episcopal Conference, Archbishop
Simon-Victor Tonyé Bakot, Archbishop of Yaoundé, for the kind words he has addressed
to me in your name. It is the third time that your country has welcomed the Successor
of Peter. As you know, my reason for coming is in the first instance to meet the
peoples of the beloved African continent and also to present to the Presidents
of the Episcopal Conferences the Instrumentum Laboris of the Second Special
Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops. This morning, through you, I would like to
offer affectionate greetings to all the faithful entrusted to your pastoral care.
May the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with each one of you, with all the
families of your great and beautiful country, with the priests, the men and women
religious, the catechists, and all who are engaged with you in proclaiming the
Gospel! In this year dedicated to Saint Paul, it is most opportune to recall the
urgent need to proclaim the Gospel to everyone. This mandate, which the Church
received from Christ, remains a priority, for there are countless people still
waiting to hear the message of hope and love that will enable them to “obtain the
glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). Together with you,
dear Brothers, it is your entire diocesan communities that are sent out to be witnesses
of the Gospel. The Second Vatican Council emphasized that “missionary activity
flows immediately from the very nature of the Church” (Ad Gentes, 6). In
order to guide and inspire the People of God in this task, the Pastors themselves,
first and foremost, must be preachers of the faith, leading new disciples to Christ.
The proclamation of the Gospel is the particular task of the Bishop, who can say,
with Saint Paul: “If I preach the Gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting.
For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Cor
9:16). To strengthen and purify their faith, the faithful need to hear the
words of their Bishop, the catechist par excellence. In order to undertake
this mission of evangelization and respond to the many challenges of today’s world,
besides holding formal meetings, which are necessary in themselves, the Pastors of
the Church must be united by a profound communion with one another. The quality of
the work accomplished by your Episcopal Conference, reflecting well the life of
the Church and of Cameroonian society, enables you to search collectively for answers
to the many challenges which the Church has to face and, through your pastoral
letters, to give common guidelines to assist the faithful in their ecclesial and
social life. A lively awareness of the collegial dimension of your ministry should
impel you to bring about among yourselves a variety of expressions of sacramental
fraternity, ranging from mutual acceptance and esteem to the various manifestations of
charity and practical cooperation (cf. Pastores Gregis, 59). Effective collaboration
between dioceses, particularly with regard to better distribution of priests in
your country, cannot fail to promote relations of fraternal solidarity with the
poorer dioceses, so that the proclamation of the Gospel should not suffer through
lack of ministers. This apostolic solidarity should also extend generously to meet
the needs of other local Bishops, especially those of your continent. Thus it will
appear clearly that your Christian communities, following the example of those that brought
the Gospel message to you, are likewise a missionary Church. Dear Brothers, the
Bishop and his priests are called to maintain relations of close communion, founded
on the one priesthood of Christ in which they share, albeit in different degrees.
The quality of the bond uniting you with the priests, your principal and irreplaceable co-workers,
is of the greatest importance. If they see in their Bishop a father and a brother
who loves them, listens to them and offers them comfort in their trials, who devotes
particular attention to their human and material needs, they are encouraged to
carry out their ministry whole-heartedly, worthily and fruitfully. The words and
example of their Bishop have a key role in inspiring them to give their spiritual
and sacramental life a central place in their ministry, spurring them on to discover
and to live ever more deeply the particular role of the shepherd as, first and
foremost, a man of prayer. The spiritual and sacramental life is an extraordinary treasure,
given to us for ourselves and for the good of the people entrusted to us. I urge you, then,
to be especially vigilant regarding the faithfulness of priests and consecrated persons
to the commitments made at their ordination or entry into religious life, so that
they persevere in their vocation, for the greater holiness of the Church and the
glory of God. The authenticity of their witness requires that there be no dichotomy
between what they teach and the way they live each day. In your dioceses, many
young men are presenting themselves as candidates for the priesthood. We can only
thank the Lord for this. It is essential that serious discernment should take place.
With this in mind, I encourage you, despite the organizational difficulties that can sometimes
occur at the pastoral level, to give priority to the choice and training of formators
and spiritual directors. They must have a personal and profound knowledge of the
candidates for the priesthood, and must be capable of offering them a solid human,
spiritual and pastoral formation so as to make them mature and balanced men, well
prepared for priestly life. Your constant fraternal support will help the formators
to accomplish their task in the love of the Church and her mission. From the
earliest days of the Christian faith in Cameroon, men and women religious have made
an essential contribution to the life of the Church. I join you in giving thanks to
God for this, and I rejoice at the development of consecrated life among the sons
and daughters of your country, giving rise also to the expression of distinctively
African charisms in communities that originated in your country. In fact, the profession
of the evangelical counsels acts as “a sign that can and should effectively inspire
all the members of the Church to fulfil indefatigably the duties of their Christian
vocation” (Lumen Gentium, 44). In your ministry of proclaiming the Gospel,
you are also assisted by other pastoral workers, particularly catechists. In the
evangelization of your country, they have played and they continue to play a key
role. I thank them for their generosity and their faithfulness in the service of the Church.
Through their work, an authentic inculturation of the faith is taking place. Their human,
spiritual and doctrinal formation is therefore indispensable. The material, moral
and spiritual support that they receive from their pastors, so that they can accomplish
their mission in good living and working conditions, also serves to express to
them the Church’s recognition of the importance of their commitment to proclaim
the faith and foster its growth. Among the many challenges facing you in your responsibility
as Pastors, the situation of the family is of particular concern. The difficulties
arising from the impact of modernity and secularization on traditional society
inspire you to defend vigorously the essential values of the African family, and
to give high priority to its thorough evangelization. In developing the pastoral
care of the family, you are eager to promote a better understanding of the nature,
dignity and role of marriage, which presupposes an indissoluble and stable union. The
liturgy occupies an important place in the expression of your communities’ faith.
In general, these ecclesial celebrations are festive and joyful, manifesting the
fervour of the faithful who are happy to be together, in Church, giving praise
to the Lord. It is therefore essential that the joy expressed in this way does
not obstruct, but rather facilitates dialogue and communion with God, attained
through a genuine internalization of the structures and words of the liturgy, so
that these express what is taking place in the hearts of believers, in true union
with all the other participants. The dignity of the celebrations, especially when
they take place in the presence of large crowds, is an eloquent sign of this. The
spread of sects and esoteric movements, and the growing influence of superstitious forms
of religion, as well as relativism, constitute an urgent invitation to give new impetus
to the formation of children and young adults, especially in university settings
and intellectual circles. In this regard, I would like to encourage and pay tribute
to the work of the Institut Catholique of Yaoundé and all the Church institutions
which have as their mission to make the word of God and the teaching of the Church
accessible and comprehensible to all. I am glad to know that the lay faithful in
your country are becoming increasingly active in the life of the Church and of
society. The numerous lay associations flourishing in your dioceses are a sign
of the Spirit’s work at the heart of the people of God, and they contribute to a renewed proclamation
of the Gospel. I am pleased to highlight and to encourage the active involvement of
women’s associations in several areas of the Church’s mission, which shows a genuine recognition
of the dignity of women and their particular vocation in the ecclesial community and in
society. I give thanks to God for the eagerness of the lay people in your country
to contribute to the future of the Church and to the proclamation of the Gospel.
Through the sacraments of Christian initiation and the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
they are empowered to proclaim the Gospel and to serve others, both individuals
and society at large. I therefore strongly encourage you to continue to offer them
a solid Christian formation so that they can “fully exercise their role of inspiring
the temporal order – political, cultural, economic and social – with Christian principles, which
is the specific task of the laity’s vocation” (Ecclesia in Africa, 75). In
the context of globalization with which we are all familiar, the Church takes a particular interest
in those who are most deprived. The Bishop’s mission leads him to be the defender
of the rights of the poor, to call forth and encourage the exercise of charity,
which is a manifestation of the Lord’s love for the “little ones”. In this way,
the faithful are led to grasp the fact that the Church is truly God’s family, gathered
in brotherly love; this leaves no room for ethnocentrism or factionalism, and it
contributes towards reconciliation and cooperation among ethnic groups for the
good of all. Moreover, through her social doctrine, the Church seeks to awaken hope
in the hearts of those left by the wayside. So it is the duty of Christians, particularly
lay people with social, economic and political responsibilities, to be guided by
the Church’s social teaching, in order to contribute to the building up of a more
just world where everyone can live with dignity. Dear Cardinal, dear Brother
Bishops, at the conclusion of our meeting, I would like to say once more what a
joy it is to be here in your country and to meet the people of Cameroon. I thank
you for your warm welcome, a sign of the generosity of African hospitality. May the Virgin
Mary, Our Lady of Africa, watch over all your diocesan communities. I entrust to her
the entire people of Cameroon, and with all my heart I impart to you an affectionate
Apostolic Blessing, which I also extend to the priests, men and women religious,
to the catechists and to all the faithful of your dioceses.