Despite troubles, Church is gift of God, Pope tells priests

(March 11, 2011) Even if the church is beset by problems, it is still a gift of God, Pope Benedict XVI said urging several hundred pastors of Rome diocese to rejoice over the fact. "Certainly, there always are difficult, negative aspects" of the church's life on earth, "but it is a beautiful gift that we can live in the church" and receive the sacraments of God's love and mercy, the Pope said on Thursday during his annual Lenten meeting with Rome’s parish priests. "The fact that the church is not only a gift of God and divine, but also very human" means there always will be problems and a need for penance, he said. Christians, however, can be confident that "truth is always stronger than lies, love is stronger than hatred and God is stronger than all the opposing forces," he said. Talking to the priests for almost 40 minutes the Pope reflected on the role of the priest. A priest, he said, is a servant and that means "doing not what would please me most," but what is necessary to serve others. Whether engaged in spiritual or administrative and temporal work, everything a priest says and does reflects on his priesthood, because the idea of someone being a "part-time priest" is impossible. Priesthood is not an occupation a man chooses as a career, he said. "Only God can make a priest, and if there's a choice involved, it's God's." Pope Benedict urged the pastors to preach the whole truth as taught by the Church, even if it is uncomfortable, and not "an ala carte Christianity according to his own tastes.