The Church is one and its mission is to speak of God and not of itself

(RV 10 Nov 07 ) Before midday the Holy Father met with members of the Portuguese Bishops Conference in the Consistory hall of the Apostolic Palace for the concluding address of their Ad Liminia pilgrimage.

Led by Cardinal Patriarch Policarpo of Lisbon and Archbishop Ortiga, of Braga, the bishops have spent the last two weeks praying at the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul as well as meeting with officials from the various curial dicasteries.

In his comments to them the Pope recalled the bishops to the true mission of the Church that is “to speak of God and not of itself”. He pointed out that “Evangelisation lies in our encounter with Jesus Christ”. “This – he explained - “does not mean that the order and attribution of responsibility in the Church should not be taken into consideration, but it must not have priority”.

The Holy Father said that “the organisational style of the Portuguese ecclesial community and the mentality of its members needs to change if the Church is to be in harmony with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council”. “The role of the religious and the lay members of the Church must be clearly defined” – he said – “starting from the presupposition that ‘we are all one’”.

Quoting his encyclical ‘Deus Caritas Est’, the Pope reaffirmed that those who wish to call themselves Christ’s followers, “can only do so if they are in union with all of those who have become or will become His… by becoming one body fused together in one existence”. “The Church” – clarified the Pope – “is this body”.

“This ecclesiology of communion” – he continued – “present in the Council and particularly heightened by the great Jubilee is the path to follow. A path that is not without its obstacles; among them horizontalism (which minimizes the vertical dimension of love of God-ed), as well as democratisation in attributing the sacred ministries”.

The Holy Father went on to praise recent initiatives promoted by the Church in Portugal which he said reveals how deeply it has been permeated by the spirit of the Great Jubilee: among these, the Pope underlined the census carried out on Sunday Mass attendance, the return to the synodal journey, the flowering of new movements and ecclesial communities and above all last months celebrations for the 90^th anniversary of Our Lady’s apparitions in Fatima.

Pope Benedict XVI concluded calling on Portugal to think of Fatima as a “school of Faith” as school with “Mary as our guide and teacher”.
Emer Mc Carthy reports: