Consistory: Cardinals, colleges and creative strategies

"New Evangelisation is accomplised with a smile not a frown", that was the message Friday as the College of Cardinals gathered around Pope Benedict XVI, for a Day of Prayer and Reflection on the eve of a consistory for the creation of 22 new cardinals. Listen:

The theme of the day was “The Announcement of the Gospel Today, Between ‘missio ad gentes’ and the New Evangelization”. Delivering the key-note address to the morning session, President of the US Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop of New York and Cardinal-designate, Timothy Dolan described secularism as a “towering challenge to the new evangelisation today”, a challenge that “calls for a creative strategy” to bring religion back to nations that were once a bedrock of faith.

He was speaking to 133 members of the 214 member College of Cardinals, the Pope’s closest collaborators, the men tasked with coming up with this “creative strategy” for the often mentioned but rarely defined New evangelisation.

But Cardinal-designate Dolan didn’t just talk about the New Evangelisation, in five simple points he outlined what the New Evangelisation actually is:

He said the new evangelisation is about not being afraid to be people of faith; it is about a Person, Jesus Christ; it is about his Truth and bringing him to others.

New Evangelisation is about joy and so is accomplished with a smile, not a frown; it is about the missio ad gentes and saying yes to everything decent, good, true, beautiful and noble in the human person. In short, New Evangelisation is about love.

And finally he concluded the New Evangelisation is about blood. He spoke of the 22 Cardinals-designate who during the consistory Saturday will receive their Scarlett hats and robes, as a sign of willingness to shed their blood for the Christian faith. Today he said people learn more from “witness than from words,” and the supreme witness is martyrdom. “The New Evangelisation is about remembering and honouring those still suffering persecution for their faith today throughout the world”.

Afterwards, the President of the Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, spoke of the upcoming Year of Faith, and significant points in the light of the Apostolic Letter “Porta fidei”. He also presented a series of initiatives under study by several Dicasteries about the Year of the Faith.

After this, there was enough time for seven interventions by participants on various themes before the Angelus prayer led by the Holy Father ended the morning session.

Of the 22 men to be proclaimed cardinals Saturday, 16 are from Europe , 4 from the Americas, 2 from Asia. There are currently 213 members of the College of Cardinals, 125 of whom are eligible to vote in a papal election.