Pope Benedict answers questions of local priests

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On Thursday, Feb. 27, Pope Benedict XVI met with priests of the Rome diocese for a session in the Vatican’s Hall of Blessings. The pope took eight questions from the priests, offering impromptu replies. Topics covered include:

• Translating faith into modern language;
• Evangelizing the secular world;
• Youth ministry;
• The global economic crisis;
• Liturgy as the center of Christian life;
• The nature of the Petrine ministry;
• The role of Mary as a model of the church;
• Indulgences.

The following is an NCR translation of the Q&A with the priests, which took place in Italian. The text was released Feb. 27 by the Vatican.

MEETING OF THE HOLY FATHER WITH THE PASTORS AND PRIESTS OF THE DIOCESE OF ROME (THURSDAY, FEB. 26, 2009)

At 11:00 am yesterday, in the Hall of Blessings, the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI met the pastors and priests of the diocese of Rome for the traditional appointment at the beginning of Lent. After an address by the Cardinal Vicar Agostino Vallini, eight priests intervened. In the following, we report a synthesis of the interventions of the priests and the responses of the Holy Father.

1. Holy Father, I am an Fr. Gianpiero Palmieri, pastor of the parish of St. Frumenzio at Prati Fiscali. I would like to ask a question about the evangelizing mission of Christian communities, and, in particular, on the role and the formation of our priests within this evangelizing mission.
To explain, I’ll begin with a personal episode. When I was a young priest and I began my pastoral service in a parish and school, I felt deeply the baggage of my studies and the formation I had received, being well rooted in the world of my convictions and my systems of thought. A believing and wise woman, seeing me in action, shook her head smiling and said to me: ‘Fr. Gianpiero, doesn’t everyone who puts on pants become a man?’ It’s an episode that has remained in my heart. That wise woman was trying to explain to me that life, the real world, God himself, are bigger and more surprising than the concepts we elaborate. She invited me to listen to human experience in order to try to understand, to comprehend, without the fear of judging. She asked me to learn, and to enter into relationship with reality, without fear, because reality is inhabited by Christ himself and acts mysteriously in his Spirit.

With respect to the evangelizing mission today, we priests feel unprepared and inadequate, always wearing shorts! Both regarding the cultural aspect – an attentive understanding of the great lines of contemporary thought eludes us, in its positive dimensions and its limits – but above all with respect to the human aspect. We always risk being too schematic, incapable of comprehending in a wise manner the hearts of today’s human person. Is not the proclamation of salvation in Christ also the proclamation of the new man in Jesus, the Son of God, in whom our poor humanity is redeemed, made authentic, and transformed by God? Thus my question: Do you share these few thoughts? In our Christian communities, many people are hurt by life. What are the places and means by which we can reinvent ourselves in order to help the humanity of others to meet Jesus? Also, how do we priests construct in ourselves a beautiful and fruitful humanity? Thank you, Holiness!

Benedict XVI:
Thank you! Dear Brothers, I would first like to express my great joy at being here with you, the pastors of Rome: my pastors, so we’re in the family here. The Cardinal Vicar has spoken well, and this is a moment of spiritual rest. In this sense, I’m grateful that I can begin Lent with a moment of spiritual relaxation, of catching my breath spiritually, in contact with you. The Vicar also said that we are together so that you can tell me about your experiences, your suffering, and also your successes and joys. Thus I wouldn’t say that I’m here to talk like an oracle, to whom you pose questions. We’re instead here for an informal exchange, which for me is very important, so that through you I can know the life of the parishes, your experiences with the Word of God in the context of today’s world. In this way, I’d like to learn too, to come closer to reality – from which anyone living in the Apostolic Palace is a little too distant.

This is also the limit of my reply. You live in direct contact, every day, with the world of today: I live with diversified contacts, which are very useful. For example, I’ve recently had the ‘ad limina’ visit of the bishops of Nigeria. In this way I could see, through them, the life of the Church in an important nation of Africa, the largest, with 140 million inhabitants, a great number of Catholics, and thus I could touch the joys and also the suffering of the Church. For me this is obviously a spiritual renewal, because it’s a Church like we see in the Acts of the Apostles. It’s a Church where the joy of having found Christ is fresh, of having found the Messiah of God. It’s a Church that lives and grows every day. The people are joyous at having found Christ. They have vocations and thus they can give priests fidei donum in various parts of the world. To see that there’s not only a tired Church, as one frequently finds in Europe, but a young Church, full of the joy of the Holy Spirit, is certainly spiritually refreshing. But it’s also important for me, with all these universal experiences, also to see my diocese, the problems and all the realities that live in this diocese.

In this sense, I’m basically in agreement with you: It’s not sufficient to preach or to execute pastoral plans with the previous baggage acquired in studies of theology. This is important and fundamental, but it has to be personalized: moving from academic knowledge, which we have learned and reflected upon, to a personal vision of my life, in order to arrive at other people. In this sense I would say that it’s important, on the one hand, to concretize the great words of the faith in our personal experience, through the encounter with our parishioners, without losing its simplicity.

Naturally, the great words of the tradition – such as the sacrifice of expiation, the redemption of the sacrifice of Christ, original sin – are today, as such, incomprehensible. We can’t simply work with grand formulae, however true, which are no longer contextualized in the world of today. Through study, what the great masters of theology say to us, and through our personal experience of God, we must concretize, translate these great words, so that they enter in the proclamation of God to the human person of today.

On the other hand, I would say that we shouldn’t obscure the simplicity of the Word of God with interpretations excessively weighted down by attempts at ‘relevance.’ I recall a friend who, having listened to some preaching that offered lengthy anthropological reflections in order to finally arrive at the Gospel, said: ‘But these commentaries don’t interest me. I want to know what the Gospel says!’ It seems to me that rather than lengthy journeys of approach, it would be better – and this is what I did when I was still in my normal life – to say, ‘We don’t like this Gospel, we’re against what the Lord says!’ But what does that mean? If I say sincerely that at first blush I don’t agree, we have people’s attention: they can see that I am trying, as a man of today, to understand what the Lord is saying. In this way, we can enter into the Word in living fashion without lengthy circuits of gloss.

We also have to remember, without false simplifications, that the twelve apostles were fishermen, artisans, of the province of Galilee, without particular preparation, without knowledge of the great Greek and Latin world. Instead they went into every part of the empire, even outside the empire, all the way to India, and proclaimed Christ with simplicity and with the strength of the simplicity of that which is true. It seems to me that this too is important: We must not lost the simplicity of the truth. God exists, and God is not a hypothetical being, but is close, he has spoken to us, he has spoken to me. Thus we can say simply how things are, though naturally one can and must explain and develop [this truth.] In doing so, however, we must not forget that we do not propose reflections, we’re not offering a philosophy, but we are proposing the simple proclamation of God who has acted – and who has acted also with me.

As for Roman cultural contextualization – which is absolutely necessary – I would say that the first help is our personal experience. We don’t live on the moon. I am a man of this time if I live my faith sincerely in the culture of today, being one who lives amid the mass media of today, the conversations, the reality of the economy, all of this, and if I take seriously my experience and seek to personalize in myself all these realities. In this way, we’re on the path of making ourselves understood by others. St. Bernard of Clairvaux said in his book of considerations for his disciple, Pope Eugene: ‘Try to drink from your own well,’ that is, from your own humanity. If you are honest with yourself and begin to see in yourself what the faith is, with your human experience in this time, drinking from your own well, as St. Bernard says, then you’ll be able to say to others what needs to be said. In this sense, it seems important to me to be really attentive to the world of today, but also to be attentive to the Lord in myself: to be a man of this time, and at the same time a believer in Christ, who in himself transforms the eternal message into a contemporary message.

Who knows the world of the people of today better than the pastor? The rectory isn’t in the world, it’s in the parish. Here, people often come to the pastor – normally without masks, without pretense, but in situations of suffering, of illness, of death, of problems in the family. They come into the confessional, without masks but as they really are. No other profession, it seems to me, gives this possibility of knowing the human person in his or her humanity, and not in terms of his or her role in society. In this sense, we can really study the human person in his depths, outside the roles people play, and learn ourselves what it is to be human – the human person always at the school of Christ. In this sense, I would say that it is absolutely important to learn what it is to be human, the human person of today, in ourselves and with the other, but also to do so always in attentive listening to the Lord and accepting into myself the seeds of the Word, so that they will be transformed in me and become communicable to others.

2. I am Fr. Fabio Rosini, pastor of St. Francesca Romana all’Ardeatino. Facing the current process of secularization and its obvious social and existential consequences, we have helpfully received on a number of occasions from your magisterium, in marvelous continuity with that of your venerated predecessor, an exhortation to the urgency of the ‘first proclamation,’ to pastoral zeal for evangelization and re-evangelization, to the assumption of a missionary mentality. We’ve understood how important the idea of conversion is in our ordinary pastoral activity – no longer taking the faith for granted on a mass scale, and not contenting ourselves with taking care of that portion of believers who persevere, thank God, in the Christian life – but interesting ourselves more decisively and organically in the many lost sheep, or at least those who are disoriented. With many different approaches, we Roman priests have tried to respond to this objective urgency to re-found the faith – or, honestly, often to found it for the first time. We are multiplying the experiences of initial proclamation, and there are some encouraging results. I can personally testify how the Gospel, proclaimed with joy and directness, does not delay in winning the hearts of the men and women of this city, precisely because it is the truth and corresponds to the most intimate needs of the human person. The beauty of the Gospel and the beauty of the faith, in fact, if presented with loving authenticity, are clear in themselves. Yet a numerical accounting, even if surprisingly high, does not in itself guarantee the worth of an initiative. Church history, including its recent history, offers many examples. A pastoral success, paradoxically, can begin in an error, in a distorted design, even one which isn’t immediately evident. Thus I’d like to ask: What are the essential criteria of this urgent task of evangelization? According to you, what are the elements that guarantee that we won’t act in vain in the pastoral effort of proclamation to this generation of ours? I humbly ask you to indicate to us, in your prudent discernment, the parameters to respect and to value in order to carry out an evangelizing work that will be genuinely Catholic and that will bear fruit for the Church. I heartily thank you for your illuminated magisterium. Blessings!

Benedict XVI
I’m happy to hear that this first proclamation is being offered, one which goes beyond the limits of the community of the faithful in search of the so-called ‘lost sheep’; that you’re trying to move toward today’s person who lives without Christ, who has forgotten Christ, in order to proclaim the Gospel. I’m also happy to hear that not only are you doing this, but that there are also some comforting numerical successes. I can see, therefore, that you’re capable of speaking to those persons among whom the faith has to be re-founded, or perhaps founded for the first time.

I can’t give you recipes for this concrete work, because the paths that have to be followed are different depending upon the people involved, their professions, their various situations. The Catechism indicates the essence of the proclamation, but it’s the one who knows the situation who has to apply these indications, finding a method to open hearts and to invite people to journey with the Lord and with the Church.

You spoke of criteria of discernment in order not to act in vain. I would say that both elements are important. The community of the faithful is precious, and we must not undervalue – even while looking to those who are far away – the positive and beautiful reality that these faithful constitute, those who say ‘yes’ to the Lord in the Church, who seek to live the faith, trying to follow the footsteps of the Lord. We have to help these faithful, as we said just a moment ago in response to the first question, to see the presence of the faith, to understand that it’s not a thing of the past, but that it shows the path today, that it teaches us how to live as a human person today. It’s very important that these faithful find in their parish a pastor who really loves them, who helps them hear the Word of God today; to understand that it’s a Word for them, and not solely for the people of the past or the future; that he help them, moreover, in the sacramental life, in the experience of prayer, in hearing the Word of God, and in living a life of justice and charity, because Christians should be a ferment in our society with so many problems and so many dangers, and also all the corruption that exists.

In this way, I believe that the faithful can also play a missionary role ‘without words,’ because it’s a matter of persons who really live a just life. Thus they offer a witness of how it’s possible to live well along the path indicated by the Lord. Our society needs precisely these communities, capable of living justice today not only for themselves but also for others. It needs people who know how to live life well, as we heard today in the First Reading. That reading says at the beginning: ‘Choose life,’ and it’s easy to say yes. But then it goes on: ‘Your life is God.’ Thus to chose life is to chose the option for life, and that option is God. If there are persons or communities that make this complete choice of life and render visible the fact that the life they’ve chosen is really life, then they’ve offered a witness of great value.

So I come to a second reflection. For proclamation we need two elements: the Word, and witness. We need, as we know from the Lord himself, the Word that tells us what he has said to us, that makes the truth of God clear, the presence of God in Christ, and the path that opens up before us. It’s a matter, therefore, of a proclamation in the present, as you said, that translates the words of the past into the world of our experience. It’s absolutely indispensable, fundamental, to give credibility to this Word through our own example, so that it doesn’t seem like just a beautiful philosophy, or a beautiful utopia, but rather a reality. It’s a reality with which one can live, but not just that: it’s a reality that makes us come alive. In this sense, it seems to me that the witness of the believing community, with the Word as its foundation, as a form of proclamation is of great importance. With the Word, we must open places of experience of the faith for those who seek God. That’s what the ancient church did with the catechumenate, which was not simply a kind of catechesis, a doctrinal thing, but a place of progressive experience in the life of the faith, in which the Word was also revealed, which became comprehensible only if it was interpreted by life and realized in life.

Thus alongside the Word, it seems important to me to have a place of hospitality in the faith, a place in which one can have a progressive experience of the faith. Here I see one of the duties of the parish: providing hospitality for those who don’t know this life typical of the parish community. We must not be a circle closed in on ourselves. We have our customs, of course, but we have to be open and to try to create ‘vestibules,’ meaning places where others can approach us. One who comes from afar can’t enter right away into the life formed by a parish which already has its ways of doing things. For such a person, at the beginning everything is very surprising and distant from his or her life. Thus we have to try to create, with the help of the Word, what the ancient church created with the catechumenate: spaces in which one can begin to live the Word, to follow the Word, to render it understandable and realistic, corresponding to forms of real experience. In this sense, it seems very important to me what you underlined, that is, the necessity of connecting the Word with the testimony of a just life, a life for others, of opening oneself to the poor, to the needy, but also to the rich who also need to be opened up in their heart, to feel touched in their heart. It’s a matter of different spaces depending upon the situations.

It seems to me that at the level of theory, it’s not possible to say much. Concrete experience will indicate the path to follow. Naturally, it’s always an important criterion to follow to be in the great communion of the Church, even if perhaps in a far-off place: that is, to be in communion with the bishop, with the pope, and thus in communion with the great past and the great future of the Church. To be in the Catholic Church, in fact, is not simply to be on a greath path that comes before, but also to be on the horizon of a great opening to the future. It’s a future, in fact, that opens up only in this way. We could perhaps go on talking about content, but we’ll be able to find another occasion for that.

3. Holy Father, I’m Fr. Giuseppe Forlai, parochial vicar for the parish of St. Giovanni Cristomo in the northern sector of our diocese. The educational emergency which Your Holiness has spoken about in authoritative fashion is also, as we all know, an emergency of educators, and I believe this is particularly true in two senses. First of all, it’s necessary to keep a better eye on the continuity of the presence of the educator-priest. A young person is not going to make a pact of growth with someone who’s likely to leave after two or three years, in part because they’re already dealing emotionally with parents who leave home, with the new partners of their mother or father, and with teachers who change every year. To educate, you have to stay. The first necessity I feel, therefore, is that of a certain stability in place of the educator-priest.

The second dimension: I believe that the fundamental challenge of pastoral work with the young is played out on the field of culture, ‘culture’ understood as emotional-relational competence and as understanding the importance of the words that concepts contain. A young person without this culture can become the poor of tomorrow, a person at risk of affective failure and of shipwreck in the world of work. A young person without this culture risks remaining a non-believer, or still worse, someone who practices but without faith, because an incapacity for relationships deforms the relationship with God, and ignorance of words blocks understanding of the excellence of the Word of the Gospel. It’s not enough that the young physically fill up the spaces of our oratories for passing a bit of free time. I want the oratory to be a place where they learn to develop relational competencies, where they are heard, and where they receive academic help. A place, in other words, not just of refuge for those who don’t want to study or to work, but a community of persons that take up these good questions which open them to the religious sense, and where the great charity of helping them to think is offered. Here, we should open a serious reflection about collaboration between the oratories and teachers of religion. Holiness, can you say an authoritative word on these two aspects of the educational emergency: the necessity of stability among workers, and the urgency of priest-educators who are culturally capable? Thank you.

Benedict XVI
Let’s begin with the second point. It’s more vast, but, in a certain sense, also easier. To be sure, a youth center that merely offers games and something to drink would be absolutely superfluous. The point of an oratory really has to be cultural formation, the formation of a human and Christian personality, which must become a mature personality. In this regard we’re absolutely in agreement. It seems to me that today there’s a cultural poverty in which we know so many things, but without a heart, without any interior connection, because a common vision of the world is lacking. For that reason, a cultural solution inspired by the faith of the church, by the awareness of God which it has given us, is absolutely necessary. I would say that this is precisely the function of a youth center: To offer not only something to do in one’s spare time, but above all to offer an integral human formation that makes the personality complete.

Therefore, the priest as educator must be himself well-formed and located within the culture of today, rich in culture, in order to help young people enter into a culture inspired by the faith. I would add, naturally, that in the end the point of orientation for every culture is God, the God present in Christ. We see today that there are persons with great knowledge, but without interior orientation. In this way, for example, science can even be dangerous, because without deep ethical orientations, it leaves the person exposed to the arbitrary, and hence, without the orientations necessary in order to become really human. In this sense, the heart of all cultural formation, which is certainly necessary, must without doubt be the faith: To know the face of God who is revealed in Christ, and thus to have the point of orientation for all the other cultures too, which may be equally confused and confusing. A culture without personal knowledge of God, and without knowledge of the face of God in Christ, is a culture that can become destructive because it doesn’t have the necessary ethic orientations. In this sense, it seems to me, we really have a deep mission of cultural and human formation, one which opens up to all the riches of the culture of our time – but one which also offers a criterion for discerning what is true culture, and what could become anti-culture.

The first question is far more difficult for me – it’s also for Your Eminence – about young priests staying in place in order to offer orientation to the young. Without doubt, a personal relationship with the educator is important, and there should be a certain period of growing together. In this sense, I can be in agreement that the priest who is the point of reference for the young shouldn’t change every day, because that would mean losing precisely this point of reference. On the other hand, a young priest also has to have diverse experiences in different cultural contexts, precisely in order to acquire, at the end, the cultural background necessary in order to be, as a pastor, a point of reference for a long time in a parish. I would also say that in the life of the young, the dimensions of time are different than for an adult. The three years from 16 to 18 are almost as long and important as the years from forty to fifty. It’s precisely in this span that the personality is formed: it’s an interior journey of great importance, of great existential development. In this sense, I would say that three years for a vice-pastor is a good amount of time for forming a generation of young people; and thus, on the other hand, he can also come to know other contexts, to learn other situations in other parishes, enriching his human background. This is always a time that’s not so brief in order to have a certain continuity, an educational path of common experience, of learning the human person. Moreover, as I said, for youth three years is a decisive and very long time, because it’s here that the future personality is formed. It seems to me, therefore, that the two needs can be reconciled: on the one hand, that the young priest have the possibility of diverse experiences in order to enrich his background of human experiences; on the other, the necessity of staying for a certain time with the young in order to introduce them in a real sense to life, to teach them how to be human beings. In this sense, I think there’s compatibility between the two dimensions: different experiences for a young priest, but also continuity in their accompanying young people in order to guide them in life. But I don’t know what the Cardinal Vicar might be able to tell us in this sense.

Cardinal Vicar
Holy Father, naturally I share these two desires, as well as the balance between them. To me it seems, for what little I’ve been able to come to know, that in Rome a certain stability of young priests within the parishes has been conserved for at least a few years, with just a few exceptions. There can always be exceptions. But the real problem sometimes comes from grave exigencies or from concrete situations, above all in the relationship between the pastor and the parochial vicar – and here I’m touching an open nerve – and thus also from the scarcity of young priests. As I had the opportunity to say when you received me in audience, one of the grave problems of our diocese is precisely the number of vocations to the priesthood. Personally, I am convinced that the Lord is calling, that he continues to call. Perhaps we have to do more. Rome can give vocations, it will give them, I’m convinced. But in this complex material, sometimes many aspects interfere. Certainly I believe a certainly stability should be guaranteed, and I too, as far as I can, will guide myself according to the indications you have given, Holy Father.

4. Holy Father, I am Fr. Giampiero Ialongo, one of the many pastors who performs his role on the periphery of Rome, physically at Torre Angela, on the border with Torbellamonaca, Borghesina, Borgata Finocchio, Colle Prenestino. These are peripheries which are often forgotten and ignored by other institutions. I’m happy that this afternoon we have been joined by the president of the municipality: we’ll see what might come from this meeting. Perhaps more than other zones of our city, our peripheries feel the pain of the international economic crisis, which is beginning to weigh on the concrete conditions of life for many families. In the form of the parish-level Caritas, but also the diocesan Caritas, we carry on many initiatives that are first of all, sometimes, a matter of listening, but also of material help, concrete help, for those who – without distinction of race, culture or religion – come to us. Despite all that, we are ever more aware that we’re facing a real and true emergency. It seems to me that many people, too many people – not only the retired, but also those who have a regular job with an indefinite contract – are facing enormous difficulties in making ends meet for their families. ‘Living packets,’ like we offer, which offer a little bit of support for paying the bills or the rent, can be of help, but I don’t believe they’re a solution. I’m convinced that as a Church, we must ask ourselves what more we can do. Even more, we must ask about the causes that have led to this generalized situation of crisis. We must have the courage to denounce an economic and financial system that’s unjust at its roots. I don’t believe that, in light of the inequalities introduced by this system, a little bit of optimism is enough. What’s needed is an authoritative word, a free word, that can help Christians – as you, Holy Father, in a certain sense already have said – use the goods which God has given us with evangelical wisdom and responsibility, goods given not just for a few but for all. I’m hoping to hear such a word from you now, just as we’ve heard from you before. Thank you, Holiness!

Benedict XVI
First of all, I’d like to thank the Cardinal Vicar for the words of faith he’s just given us: Rome can give more candidates for the Lord’s harvest. We must pray to the Lord of the harvest, but we must also do our part to encourage young people to say ‘yes’ to the Lord. Naturally, young priests are especially called to give an example to the young people of today that it’s good to work for the Lord. In this sense, we are full of hope. Let’s pray to the Lord, and let’s do our part.

Now, for this question that touches the nerve of the problems of our time. I would distinguish two levels. The first is the level of the macro-economy, which realizes itself and extends to the last citizen, who feels the consequences of a mistaken foundation. Naturally, it’s the duty of the Church to denounce this. As you know, I’ve been preparing an encyclical on these points for a long time. Along the way, I’ve come to see how difficult it is to speak with competence, because if a given economic reality isn’t confronted competently, [the treatment] won’t be credible. On the other hand, it’s also important to speak with deep ethical awareness – let’s say, a conscience created by, and awakened in, the Gospel. Hence, it’s essential to denounce the fundamental errors now revealed in the collapse of the great American banks, the errors which lie at the bottom. In the end, it’s a question of human avarice in the form of sin, or, as the Letter to the Colossians says, avarice as idolatry. We must denounce this idolatry which stands against the true God, and the falsification of the image of God with another God, which is ‘mammon.’ We must do so with courage, but also with concreteness. Great moralisms don’t help if they’re not given substance through awareness of the reality, an awareness which helps indicate what can slowly be done to change the situation. Naturally, to do that requires the understanding of this truth and the good will of all.

Here we come to the hard part: Does original sin really exist? If it doesn’t exist, we can simply appeal to the light of reason, with arguments that are accessible and incontestable to everyone, and appeal to the good will that exists in everyone. If there’s no original sin, we can simply go forward and reform humanity. But that’s not how it is: reason, including our reason, is obscured, and we see that every day. Egotism, the root of avarice, stands in the desire to have me for myself, and the world for myself. It exists in all of us. This is the obscuring of reason: our reasoning can be quite subtle, with beautiful scientific arguments, but it’s still obscured by false premises. Thus, we move with great intelligence and great steps forward down a mistaken path. Also our will is, let’s say, ‘bent,’ as the Fathers say: it’s not simply inclined to do the good, but it seeks above all its own good or that of its group. Thus to really find the path of reason, true reason, is no easy thing, and it’s developed only with difficulty in dialogue. Without the light of faith, which enters into the darkness of original sin, reason cannot move forward. Faith, however, runs into the resistance of our will. Our will doesn’t want to see the path, which would also represent a path of self-denial and a correction of our own desires in favor of others.

For this reason, I would say, what’s needed is a reasonable and reasoned denunciation of errors, not with sweeping moralisms, but with concrete arguments that are comprehensible in the world of today’s economy. The denunciation of these errors is important, it’s always been part of the Church’s mandate. We know that in the new situation created with the industrial world, the social doctrine of the Church, beginning with Leo XIII, tried to offer these denunciations – and not just denunciations, which are never sufficient, but also to indicate the hard paths upon which, step by step, the assent of both reason and will can be obtained, along with the correction of my conscience, in order to deny myself in a certain sense and to be able to collaborate with that which is the true scope of human life, of humanity.

That said, the Church always has the duty to be vigilant, to seek with its best efforts to understand the logic of the economic world, to enter into this reasoning and to illuminate it with the faith that liberates us from the egoism of original sin. It’s the duty of the Church to enter into this discernment, into this reasoning, to make itself heard, including at the different national and international levels, in order to help and to correct. This is not an easy task, because so many personal interests and national groups are opposed to a radical correction. Maybe it’s pessimism, but to me it seems like realism: as long as there’s original sin, we will never arrive at a radical and total solution. However, we have to do everything we can on behalf of at least provisional solutions, solutions sufficient to allow humanity to live and to prevent the domination of the egoism which presents itself under the pretext of science and the national and international economy.

This is the first level. The other is to be realists, to see that these great aims of macro-science are never realized in micro-science – the macro-economy in the micro-economy – without the conversion of hearts. Where there aren’t just people, there is no justice. We have to accept this. For that reason, education in justice is a priority, perhaps we could say ‘the’ priority. St. Paul says that justification is the effect of the work of Christ. It’s not an abstract concept, regarding sins that no longer concern us today, but it refers precisely to integral justice. God alone can give it to us, but he offers it only with our cooperation on diverse levels, on all the levels possible.

Justice cannot be created in the world solely through good economic models, however necessary those are. Justice is created only where there are just people. There cannot be just people without a humble, daily work of conversion of hearts, or creating justice in hearts. Only thus does corrective justice spread itself. In this sense, the work of the pastor is fundamental, not only for the parish, but for humanity. As I’ve said, without just people, the concept of justice remains an abstraction. Good structures can’t be developed if they’re opposed by egoism, including that of competent people.

This work of ours, humble, daily, is fundamental in order to reach the great aims of humanity. We have to work together on all levels. The universal Church must denounce, but it also has to suggest what can be done and how to do it. The episcopal conferences and the bishops must act. But all of us together must educate about justice. The dialogue of Abraham with God (Genesis 18:22-33) seems to me still true and realistic, when Abraham says: Are you truly going to destroy the city? Maybe there are fifty just people, maybe there are ten, and ten just people are enough the city to survive. On the other hand, if the ten just people are missing, even with all the economic doctrine, society cannot survive. Hence we have to do what it takes to educate, to ensure that there are at least ten just people … but if possible, many more. With our proclamation, let’s act so that there are many just people, and therefore that there may be justice in the world.

In effect, these two levels are inseparable. If, on the one hand, we don’t proclaim macro-justice, then micro-justice won’t grow. But on the other hand, if we don’t do our very humble work of micro-justice, then macro-justice won’t grow either. And always, as I said in my first encyclical, despite all the systems that can grow in the world, and beyond the justice that we seek, charity always remains necessary. To open hearts to justice and to charity is to educate in the faith, it’s to guide people to God.

5. Holy Father, I am Fr. Marco Valentini, a vicar at the parish of Sant’Ambrogio. When I was in formation I didn’t understand, in the way I do now, the importance of liturgy. Certainly there were celebrations, but I didn’t understand very well how the liturgy is ‘the culmination towards which the action of the Church tends, and the source from which all its energy flows’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10). I thought of it rather in a technical sense for execting a celebration well, or maybe a pious practice, but not as contact with the mystery which saves, not as a way of conforming oneself to Christ in order to be light for ther world, not as a source of theology, not as a means to realize the much-hoped-for integration between study and spiritual life. I thought that the liturgy maybe wasn’t strictly necessarily for being Christian or for being saved, and that it was enough to practice the Beatitudes. Now, I ask myself what charity would be without the liturgy, and if without it, the faith would not be reduced to a moral code, an idea, a doctrine, a fact of the past, and if we priest would not seem more like teachers or counselors rather than mystagogues who introduce people into the mystery. The Word of God itself is a proclamation that’s realized in liturgy, and which has a surprising relationship with it (Sacrosanctum Concilium 6; Praenotanda to the Lectionary 4 and 10). We also think of the Emmaus story, or the Ethiopian functionary (Acts 8). Thus I arrive at the question. Without taking anything away from human, philosophical or psychological formation in the universities and the seminaries, I would like to understand if our distinctive identity doesn’t require a greater liturgical formation – if the actual practice and structure of studies currently satisfy Sacrosanctum Concilium 16, when it says that liturgy must be considered among the most necessary and important subjects, the principal subjects, that it should be taught under theological, historical, spiritual, pastoral and legal aspects, and that professors in other areas take care that the connections with the liturgy be clear. I’ve asked this question because, taking my point of departure from the decree Optatam totius, it seems to me that the multiple actions of the Church in the world, along with our own pastoral efficacy, depend greatly upon the awareness we have of the inexhaustible mystery of our being baptized, confirmed and ordained.

Benedict XVI
If I’ve understood you, you’re asking the following question: In the totality of our pastoral work, which is highly diverse and has many dimensions, what should be the space of liturgical education and of the reality of celebrating the mystery. In this sense, it seems to me, it’s also a question of the unity of our proclamation and our pastoral work, which has many dimensions. We have to seek the unifying point, so that these many occupations we have are truly a pastoral work. If I’ve understood well, you’re of the opinion that the unifying point, which creates a synthesis of all the dimensions of our work and of our faith, could be precisely the celebration of the mysteries – and thus the mystagogy which teaches us to celebrate.

For me, it’s really important that the sacraments, the Eucharistic celebration of the sacraments, not be something a little strange alongside more contemporary works like moral education, economics, all the things we just said. It can easily happen that the sacraments remain a bit isolated in a more pragmatic context, and become something not entirely inserted into the totality of our being human. Thanks for the question, because really we must all teach what it is to be human. We must teach this great art: how to be human. This demands, as we have seen, many things: from the great denunciation of original sin at the roots of our economy and in the many branches of our life, as well as concrete indications about justice and proclamation to non-believers. But the [sacramental] mysteries are not something exotic in the cosmos of more practical realities. The mystery is the heart from which our strength comes, and to which we must return in order to find this center. For that reason, I think that the catechesis which we call ‘mystagogy’ is really important. ‘Mystagogy’ also means something realistic, referred to the life of men and women of today. If it’s true that man is not the measure of himself – of what’s just and what isn’t – but that man finds his measure outside of himself, in God, it’s important that this God not be distant but rather recognizable, concrete, that God enter into our life and be truly a friend with whom we can speak and who speaks to us. We must learn to celebrate the Eucharist, learn to know Jesus Christ, the God with a human face, who is close to us. We must enter really into contact with him, learn to hear him and learn to allow him to enter into us. Sacramental communion is precisely this interpenetration between two persons. I don’t take a piece of bread or of flesh, I take or open my heart so that the Risen One may enter into the context of my being, so that he may be inside me and not only outside me, and thus so that he may speak inside me and transform my being, giving me the sense of justice, the dynamism of justice, the zeal for the Gospel.

This celebration, in which God not only makes himself close to us but enters into the fabric of our existence, is fundamental for really living with God and for God, and for carrying the light of God into this world. Let’s not enter right now into too many details. But it’s always important that sacramental catechesis be an existential catechesis. Naturally, alongside accepting and learning ever more the mysterious aspect – where words and reasoning ends – it is also totally realistic, because it carries me to God and God to me. It also leads me to the other, because the other receives the same Christ like me. If there’s the same Christ in him and in me, then we two are no longer separate individuals. This is where the doctrine of the Body of Christ is born, because we are all incorporated into it if we receive well the Eucharist in the same Christ. Hence our neighbor is truly a neighbor: we are not two separate ‘I’s’, but we are united in the same ‘I’ of Christ. In other words, the Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis must really arrive at the life of our existence, it must be an education in opening myself to the voice of God, in allowing myself to be opened so that the original sin of egoism can be broken and my existence can be opened up in its depths, so that I can become truly a just person. In this sense, it seems to me that we must all learn the liturgy ever better, not as an exotic thing, but as the heart of our being Christian, which does not open itself easily to someone who is distant, but which, on the other hand, is also an opening to others and to the world. We must all work together to celebrate the Eucharist ever more deeply: not only as a rite, but as an existential process that touches me intimately, more than anything else, and that changes me, transforms me. In transforming me, it also initiates the transformation of the world that the Lord wants, and for which he wants to make us instruments.

6. Most Blessed Father, I am Fr. Lucio Maria Zappatore, a Carmelite, pastor of the parish of Santa Maria Regina Mundi in Torrespaccata. To explain my intervention, I’ll return to what you said last Sunday during the prayer of the Angelus regarding the Petrine ministry. You spoke of the singular and specific ministry of the Bishop of Rome, who presides in charity over the universal communion. I ask you to continue this reflection extending it to the universal Church: what is the singular charism of the Church of Rome, and what are the characteristics that make it, by a mysterious gift of providence, unique in the world? By having as its bishop the pope of the universal church, what does that imply for its mission, today in particular? We don’t want to know our privileges. (Once upon a time, it was said, ‘Pastor in the cirty, bishop in the world.’) We want to know how to live this charism, this gift of living as priests in Rome, and thus what you expect from us as Roman pastors.

In a few days, you’ll be going to the Campidoglio in order to meet the civil authorities of Rome, and you’ll speak about the material problems of our city. Today, we ask you to speak to us about the spiritual problems of Rome and of her church. With regard to your visit to the Campidoglio, I’ve permitted myself to dedicate a sonnet to you in the Roman dialect, asking the pleasure of reading it to you: ‘Er Papa che salisce al Campidojo / è un fatto che te lassa senza fiato / perchè 'sta vortas sòrte for dar sojo, / pe creanza che tiè 'n bon vicinato. / Er sindaco e la giunta con orgojo / jànno fatto 'n invito , er più accorato, / perchè Roma, se sà, vojo o nun vojo /nun po' fa' proprio a meno der papato. / Roma, tu ciài avuto drento ar petto / la forza pè portà la civirtà. / Quanno Pietro t'ha messo lo zicchetto / eterna Dio t'ha fatto addiventà. / Accoji allora er Papa Benedetto / che sale a beneditte e a ringrazià!

Benedict XVI
Thank you. We’ve heard the heart of Rome speak, which is a heart of poetry. It’s very beautiful to hear a little bit of Romanesco, and to hear that poetry is deeply rooted in the Roman heart. This, perhaps, is a natural privilege that the Lord has given to the Romans. It’s a natural charism that comes before the ecclesial kind.

Your question, if I understood it well, is composed of two parts. First of all, what is the concrete responsibility of the Bishop of Rome today? But then, you properly extent the Petrine privilege to the entire Church of Tome – it was thought of that way also in the ancient church – and ask what are the obligations of the Church of Rome to respond to this vocation of hers. It’s not necessary here to develop the doctrine of the primacy, which you all know very well. It’s rather important to emphasize that the Successor of Peter, the ministry of peter, really guarantees the universality of the Church, this transcendence of nationalism and of other frontiers that exist within the humanity of today, in order to be really one Church in its diversity and in the richness of so many cultures.

We can see how other churches and ecclesial communities also feel the need of a unifying point, in order not to fall into nationalism, into identification with a given culture – for being truly open, all for all, and for being almost constrained to remain continually open toward the others. This seems to me to be the fundamental ministry of the Successor of Peter: to guarantee this ‘catholicity,’ which implies multiplicity, diversity, richness of cultures, respect for diversity, and, at the same time, excludes absolutization and unites everyone, obligating them to remain open, to step out from absolutizing their own experience in order to find themselves in the unity of the family of God which the Lord wanted, and for which the Successor of Peter is the guarantee of unity in diversity. Naturally the church of the Successor of Peter must carry, along with its bishop, this weight, this joy of the gift of its responsibility. In the Book of Revelation, the bishop appears as the angel of his church, that is, a bit like the incorporation of his church, to which the being of his church itself must correspond. Thus the Church of Rome, together with the Successor of Peter and as a particular church, must guarantee precisely this universality, this presiding in love, which excludes particularisms. It must also guarantee fidelity to the Word of the Lord, to the gift of faith, which we have not invented but which is really a gift that could only come from God himself. This is and will always be the duty, but also the privilege, of the Church of Rome, against fashions, against particularisms, against the absolutization of some aspects, against the heresies which are always attempts to absolutize only a certain aspect of the faith. It’s also a duty to guarantee universality and fidelity to the completeness, to the richness of her faith, of her journey in history, which is always open to the future.

Together with this witness of faith and universality, naturally she must give an example of charity. As St. Ignatius says to us, identifying in this slightly enigmatic expression the sacrament of the Eucharist, [charity is] the action of loving others. This, in order to return to the preceding point, is very important: that is, this identification with the Eucharist which is love, which is charity, which is the presence of the charity that’s given to us in Christ. There must always be charity, the sign and cause of charity in our opening to others, giving ourselves to others, responsibility for the neediest, for the poor, for the forgotten. This is a great responsibility. After presiding at the Eucharist follows presiding in charity, which can only be testified to by the community itself. This seems to me the great duty, the great challenge for the Church of Rome: to be truly an example and a point of departure for charity. This is the sense of presiding in charity.

In the Presbyterate of Rome, we come from every continent, every race, every philosophy and every culture. I’m happy that the Presbyterate of Rome expresses universality, uniting the little local church with the presence of the universal church. It’s more difficult and demanding to also be truly carriers of witness, of charity, of standing amid others with our Lord. We can only pray that the Lord help us in the individual parishes, in the individual communities, and that all together we may be truly faithful to this gift, to this mandate: to preside in charity.

7. Holy Father, I am Fr. Gulliermo M. Cassone, of the Community of Schoenstatt Fathers in Rome, and pastoral vicar in the parish of the Patron Saints of Italy, St. Francis and St. Catherine, in Trastevere. After the Synod on the Word of God, reflecting on proposition 55, ‘Mary Mother of God and Mother of Faith,’ I asked myself how to improve the relationship between the Word of God and Marian piety, both in the spiritual life of the priest and also in pastoral activity. Two images helped me: the Annunciation for hearing, and the Visitation for proclamation. I would like to ask, Holiness, that you illuminate us with your teaching on this theme. Thank you for this gift.

Benedict XVI
It seems to me that you’ve already given the answer to your question. Really, Mary is the gift of hearing: we see it in the encounter with the Angel, and we see it again in all the scenes of her life, from the wedding at Cana, all the way to the Cross and to the day of Pentecost, when she is among the Apostles to welcome the Spirit. She is the symbol of opening, of the Church which awaits the coming of the Holy Spirit.

In the moment of the Annunciation, we can already glean the attitude of hearing – a true hearing, a hearing of interiorization, which does not simply say ‘yes,’ but assimilates the Word, takes the Word – and then follows it with true obedience, as if it were an interiorized Word, that is, it has become Word in me and for me, almost as the form of my life. This seems to me very beautiful: To see this active hearing, a hearing which attracts the Word in such a way that it enters in me and becomes Word in me, reflecting on it and accepting to the depths of the heart. Thus the Word becomes incarnation.
We see the same thing in the Magnificat. We know that it’s a fabric woven from the words of the Old Testament. We see that Mary truly is a woman of hearing, who conserves the Scripture in her heart. She not only knows the words of certain texts, but she was so identified with the Word that the words of the Old Testament become, in synthetic form, a song in her heart and on her lips. We see that her life was truly penetrated by the Word: she entered into the Word, she assimilated it and it became life in her, transforming itself anew in a Word of praise and of proclaiming the greatness of God.

It seems to me that St. Luke, referring to Mary, says at least three times, perhaps four times, that she assimilated and conserved the Words in her heart. She was, for the Fathers, the model of the Church, the model of the believer who conserves the Word, who carries in herself the Word; who not only reads it, interpreted with the intellect for knowing what it meant in that time and what the philological problems are and so on. All this is interesting and important, but it’s more important to hear the Word that must be conserved and that becomes Word in me, life in me, and the presence of the Lord. Thus, to me the connection seems important between Mariology and theology of the Word, regarding which the synodal fathers spoke, and about which we too will speak in the post-synodal document.

It’s obvious: ‘Madonna’ is a word of hearing, a word of silence, but also a word of praise, or proclamation, so that the Word of hearing becomes flesh anew and becomes the presence of the greatness of God.

8. Holy Father, I am Pietro Riggi and I am a Salesian who works in the Don Bosco Youth Borgo, and I want to ask you: the Second Vatican Council brought many important novelties into the Church, but it did not abolish the things that were already there. It seems to me that various priests or theologians would like to pass off as the spirit of the Council that which in fact has nothing to do with the Council. For example, indulgences. There is a Manual of Indulgences from the Apostolic Penitentiary, and through indulgences one can add to the fabric of the Church and support the souls in Purgatory. There’s a liturgical calendar in which it explains when and how to obtain plenary indulgences, but many priests never talk about, thereby preventing important support from reaching the souls in Purgatory. Or, take blessings. There’s a Manual of Blessings with formulae for blessings of persons, households, objects and even of food. But many priests don’t know these things, others regard them as pre-conciliar, and thus they drive away those faithful who ask for things which by right they ought to have. Or, take the least-known practices of piety. First Fridays weren’t abolished by Vatican II, but many priests never talk about them, or, rather they speak poorly about them. Today there’s a sense of aversion toward all this, because it’s seen as antique and dangerous, as things which are old and preconciliar, even though I believe that all these Christian prayers and practices are highly relevant and very important, and that they should be taken up again and explained adequately to the People of God, with the healthy equilibrium and the truth and completeness of Vatican II.

I also want to ask you: One time, speaking of Fatima, you said that there’s a connection between Fatima and Akita, the weeping Madonna in Japan. Both Paul VI and John Paul II celebrated a solemn Mass at Fatima and used the same piece of hole scripture, Revelation 12, the woman dressed in the sun that wages a decisive battle against the ancient serpent, the devil, Satan. Is there an affinity between Fatima and Revelation 12?

To conclude: Last year a priest gave you a painting. I don’t know how to paint, but I’d also like to give you a gift, and therefore I had in mind giving you a gift of three books that I wrote recently. I hope you like them.

Benedict XVI
These are realities of which the Council didn’t speak, but presupposed as realities within the Church. They live in the Church and develop in it. Now is not the time for entering into the great theme of indulgences. Paul VI reordered this subject, and he gives us the line for understanding it. I would say that it’s simply a matter of an exchange of gifts. That is, when there’s something good in the Church, it’s meant for all. With the key of indulgences, we can enter into this communion of goods in the Church. Protestants oppose it, affirming that the only treasure is Christ. But for me, the marvelous thing is that Christ – who is more than sufficient in his infinite love, in his divinity and humanity – wanted to add, to what he did, also our poverty. He doesn’t consider us solely as objects of his mercy, but he makes us subjects of mercy and of love together with him, almost as if – even if not quantitatively, but at least in a mysterious sense – he wanted to add us to the great treasure of the Body of Christ. He wanted to be the head with the body. He wanted the mystery of redemption to be completed with the body. Jesus wanted to have the Church as his body, in which all the richness of what he did is realized. On the basis of this mystery, there is a tesaurus ecclesiae, which the body, like the head, gives away, which we may have and which we may give one to the other.

The same thing applies to the other subjects you mention. For example, the Fridays of the Sacred Heart are a very beautiful thing in the Church. These are not necessary things, but they’ve grown up in the richness of meditation upon the mystery. Thus the Lord offers us these possibilities in the Church. This doesn’t seem to me like the moment to enter into all the details. Everyone can more or less understand what’s less important than something else; but no one should disrespect this richness, grown up over the centuries as an offering, as a multiplication of the lights in the church.

The light of Christ is one. It appears in all its colors, and offers the awareness of the richness of his gift, the interaction between head and body, the interaction among the members, so that we may truly be together a living organism, in which everyone gives to all, and all give the Lord, who has given us his entire self.