Pope encourages Christian volunteers

(November 11, 2011) In the current situation of the world marked by crisis and uncertainty, the commitment of Catholic volunteers is a reason for confidence and hope, since it shows that goodness exists and that it is growing in our midst, Pope Benedict XVI said on Friday. “The faith of all Catholics is surely strengthened when they see the good that is being done in the name of Christ,” the Pope told some 150 Catholic volunteers who met him during their two-day conference in Rome that ended on Friday. The Vatican’s Pontifical Council “Cor Unum” organized the Nov. 10-11 conference in view of the current European Year of Volunteering. Thanking millions of Catholic volunteers engaged in the Church’s vast network of charities across the globe, the Pope reminded them that for Christians, volunteer work is based on a personal experience of Christ who helps us to discover within ourselves a human desire for solidarity and a fundamental vocation to love. Christ who said, “Freely you have received, freely you give,” enables us to serve others without reward, satisfaction or any recompense. We also become visible instruments of his love in a world that still profoundly yearns for that love amid the poverty, loneliness, marginalization and ignorance that we see all around us, he said. The Pope recalled that origin of volunteerism can still be seen in the particularly Christian concern for safeguarding, without discrimination, the dignity of the human person created in the image and likeness of God. Without this, the Pope warned, collaboration become purely utilitarian to the detriment of society as a whole.