Cardinal Filoni gives address in Madrid

(Vatican Radio/ Agenzia Fides) Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, on Tuesday gave a speech at the Universidad San Damaso in Madrid, at a study day marking the 50th anniversary of the Vatican II conciliar decrees "Perfectae Caritatis" and "Ad Gentes."

"The ongoing commitment of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, together with the Episcopal Conferences and individual Bishops, is to bring to the local Churches in mission territories the ability and resources to create all the structures and legal staff that allow, together with pastoral life, the capacity to administer justice, the source of peaceful coexistence," he said, according to the Fides news service.

Cardinal Filoni outlined a broad historical overview on “The reception of the Canon Law in the territories of mission and the special powers granted to the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.”

He said " missionaries enjoyed powers and privileges because the missions had extraordinary circumstances and the universal law could not always be observed in its totality."

The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples currently has 186 archdioceses, 785 dioceses, 82 Apostolic vicariates, 39 apostolic prefectures, four apostolic administrations, 6 missio sui iuris, 1 territorial abbey and 6 military ordinariates under its jurisdiction.

"This administrative variety indicates the inadequacy and, one might even say, in certain contexts, the extreme difficulty of applying the law,” Cardinal Filoni said. “This means that the universal law is applied where it is possible, and in other cases special powers are still needed."

After having focused on the current special powers of the Congregation regarding various areas of intervention, reconfirmed by Pope Benedict XVI on April 30, 2005, Cardinal Filoni concluded by saying that "the powers granted to the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples are intended to facilitate the organic development of the ecclesiastical society, with regards to the primacy of love, of grace and of the Gospel.”