Pope calls Religious Orders to ‘Transparent Administration’

Rome, 08 March 2014: Pope Francis has sent a message on Saturday to the participants of a Vatican-organized Symposium on "The management of the ecclesiastical goods of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, for the service of humanity and for the mission of the Church."

The two-day event, which was organized by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, at the request of Pope Francis, is taking place at the Pontifical University Antonianum.

In his message addressed to Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Pope Francis recognized that ‘our time is characterized by significant changes and progress in many areas. However, citing his own apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium the Pope writes: "Today, everything comes into play in competitiveness and survival of the fittest, where the strong eat the weak". As a Christian community we feel challenged in the face of uncertainty in which most of the men and women of our time live, observed the Pope.

Pope Francis exhorted the members saying that ‘Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life can and should be protagonists and active in the life and witness that the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift find their place in economic activity.’ The fidelity to the founding charism and the spiritual heritage, together with the true purpose of each institute, remain the first criterion of evaluation of the administration, and management, said the Pope adding "the nature of charisma directs energies, sustains their fidelity and directs the apostolic work of all towards the one mission".

The Pope exhorted them ‘to ensure that the goods of the Institutes are administered with caution and transparency’, not to waste and is attentive to the proper use of resources.

In his message Pope Francis also recalled the words of Servant of God Paul VI who called for "a new and authentic Christian mentality" and a "new style of life of the Church".

I wanted to draw such a need in the Message for Lent this year, said the Pope adding, ‘Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life are always prophetic voice and witness the vibrant novelty which is Christ, conformed to him who became poor enriching us with his poverty.’ This poverty is loving solidarity, sharing and charity and is expressed in sobriety, in the pursuit of justice and warning to the idols of materialism that obscure the true meaning of life.
You do not need a theoretical poverty, said the Pope, but poverty is that you learn by touching the flesh of the poor Christ, in the humble, the poor, the sick, and the children. Pope Francis concluded his message inviting the participants to follow the ‘logic of the Gospel which teaches us to trust in the Providence of God’.Source: VR Sedoc