June 06, 2013: Pope Francis on Thursday spoke to the members of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical
Academy, which is dedicated to training priests to serve in the diplomatic corps and
the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. In his address, the Holy Father reminded
the students that they must cultivate a deep spiritual life in order to attain the
“inner freedom” that is necessary for their future work.
He also warned against
ambition, and once again denounced careerism, which he called “a leprosy.” Pope
Francis looked to Blessed John XXIII as a model for the aspiring diplomats, recalling
the care his predecessor always took “in guarding his soul, even in the midst of the
most varied ecclesiastical and political occupations.”
Finally, Pope Francis
made a special point of thanking the Sisters and the lay workers at the Pontifical
Academy for their devoted service.
Below, please find the complete text of
the Pope Francis’ remarks to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy.
Dear
Brothers in the Episcopate, Dear priests, dear sisters, friends
I extend
a warm welcome to all of you! I affectionately greet your President, Archbishop Beniamino
Stella, and I thank him for the kind words he addressed to me on your behalf, remembering
the welcome visits that I have made in the past to your Casa. I also remember the
friendly insistence with which Bishop Stella convinced me, now two years ago, to send
to the Academy a priest of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires! Archbishop Stella knows
to knock at the door! The problem was on my end, because I not found a priest to send,
and I chose a “marathoner” . . . I sent him. A grateful thought goes also to his colleagues
and to the Sisters and staff, who offer their generous service in your community.
Dear
friends, you are preparing for a particular ministry of commitment, which will place
you in the direct service of the Successor of Peter, of his charism of unity and communion,
and of his solicitude for all the Churches. The work that is done in the Pontifical
diplomatic service requires, like any type of priestly ministry, a great inner freedom.
Live these years of your preparation with commitment, generosity, and greatness of
soul, so that this freedom can really take shape in you!
But what does it mean
to have this interior freedom? First of all it means being free from personal projects,
being free from personal projects: from some of the concrete ways in which perhaps
one day, you had thought of living your priesthood, from the possibilities of planning
for the future; from the perspective of remaining for a long time in a “your” place
of pastoral action. It means freeing yourself, in some way, even with respect to the
culture and mindset from which you came, not by forgetting it, much less by denying
it, but by opening yourself up, in charity, to understanding different cultures and
meeting with people even from worlds very far from your own. Above all, it means vigilance
in order to be free from ambition or personal aims, which can cause so much harm to
the Church, taking care to always put in the first place not your own self-fulfillment,
or the recognition that you could get whether inside and outside of the ecclesial
community, but the greater good of the cause of the Gospel and the fulfillment of
the mission that has been entrusted to you. This freedom from ambition or personal
aims, for me, is important, it’s important! Careerism is leprosy! Leprosy! Please,
no careerism! For this reason, each of you must be willing to integrate your vision
of the Church, however legitimate, every personal idea or assessment, within the horizons
seen by Peter, of his particular mission at the service of communion and the unity
of the flock of Christ, of his pastoral charity which embraces the whole world, and
that, thanks also to the action of the Pontifical diplomatic service, wishes to make
itself present especially in those places, often forgotten, where the needs of the
Church and of humanity are greatest.
In a word, the ministry for which you
are preparing – because you are being prepared for a ministry, not a profession: it
is a ministry! – this ministry calls you to go out of yourself, to a detachment from
self that can only be achieved through an intense spiritual journey and a serious
unification of your life around the mystery of the love of God and of the inscrutable
plan of His call. In the light of the faith, we are able to live the freedom from
our own projects and our own will, not as a cause of frustration or emptying, but
as an opening to the superabundant gift of God, that makes our priesthood fruitful.
Living the ministry in service to the Successor of Peter and to the Church to which
you are called may appear demanding, but it will allow you, so to say, to be and to
breathe within the heart of the Church, of its catholicity. And this constitutes a
special gift, because, as Pope Benedict recalled when speaking to your community,
“wherever there is openness to the objectivity of catholicity, there is also the principle
of authentic personalization” (Speech to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, 10
June 2011).
Have great care for the spiritual life, which is the source of
inner freedom. Without prayer, there is no interior freedom. You can make a precious
treasure of the instruments of conforming your priestly spirituality to Christ Himself,
cultivating a life of prayer and making your daily work the gymnasium of your sanctification.
Here I am happy to recall the figure of Blessed John XXIII, the fiftieth anniversary
of whose death we celebrated a few days ago: his work in the Pontifical diplomatic
service was one of the places, and not the least significant, in which his sanctity
was formed. Rereading his writings, one is impressed by the care he always took in
guarding his soul, in the midst of the most varied ecclesial and political occupations.
Here was born his inner freedom, the joy that he conveyed outwardly, and the effectiveness
of his pastoral and diplomatic action. As he said in his Journal of a Soul, “the more
mature I become in years and in experience, the more I recognize that the surest means
for my personal sanctification and for the greater success of my service to the Holy
See, remains the vigilant effort to reduce everything – principles, speeches, positions,
affairs, to the greatest simplicity and calmness; in my vineyard, always to prune
that which is simply useless foliage . . . and to go directly to that which is truth,
justice, charity, above all charity. Any other [way] of doing things, is nothing but
posturing and grasping at personal affirmation, which betrays itself and becomes cumbersome
and ridiculous.” (Cinisello Balsamo 2000, p. 497). He wanted to prune his vineyard:
to chase out the foliage, to prune. . . And some years later, joined to the end of
his work in the Pontifical diplomatic service, when he was already Patriarch of Venice,
he wrote, “Now I find myself completely in the ministry of souls. Truly I have always
held that for an ecclesiastic, diplomacy, so to say, should always be permeated by
a pastoral spirit; otherwise, it counts for nothing, and makes a holy mission ridiculous”
(ibid., pp. 513-14). But this is important! Listen well: When in the Nunciature there
is a secretary or a nuncio that doesn’t go along the way of sanctity, and gets involved
in so many forms, in so many kinds of spiritual worldliness, he looks ridiculous,
and everyone laughs at him! Please don’t be ridiculous: either [be] saints or go back
to the diocese and be a pastor, but don’t be ridiculous in the diplomatic [service],
in the diplomatic lives, where there is so much danger of becoming worldly in spirituality.
I
would also like to say something to the Sisters – thank you for coming! – who undertake
their daily service among you with a religious and Franciscan spirit. They are good
Mothers who accompany you with prayer, with their simple and essential words, and
above all by the example of loyalty, dedication and love. Along with them I would
like to thank the lay staff who work in Casa. Their hidden, but important presence,
allows you to spend your time in the Academy with serenity and commitment.
Dear
priests, I hope that you will undertake the service to the Holy See with the same
spirit as Blessed John XXIII. I ask you to pray for me, and I commend you to the safekeeping
of the Virgin May and of Saint Anthony the Abbot, your patron. May the assurance of
my prayers and of my blessing – which I cordially extend to all your loved ones –
go with you. Thank you!