Pope Francis on Monday morning met for over two hours with priests from the Diocese of Rome.
The
private meeting, an annual event that takes place in the Basilica of
Saint John Lateran, was a moment of greetings and exchange.
After
the Vicar General of Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini delivered his
welcoming speech, the Pope addressed the clergy and then took time to
answer the many questions they put to him.
His first words to his brother priests were words of encouragement and closeness.
Speaking
off the cuff to bishops, vicars, priests and deacons, Pope Francis said
the Church needs “shepherds of the people, not clerics of the State”.
Dipping into a letter he had written to his priests when he was
Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2008, a year after the Aparecida
Conference, and that he used as a text upon which to reflect in the
lead-up to this encounter, the Pope said “a priest belongs to the
people of God” and he reminded priests never to lose their identity
which is in communion with the Holy Spirit, because without the Holy
Spirit – he said - “we are in danger of losing our way in the
understanding of faith”, and run the risk of ending up disoriented and
self-referenced.
And Pope Francis told his fellow bishops always to
be close to the rest of the clergy, and to support them in times of
difficulty and fatigue.
He invited them to be both pastors and
zealous missionaries who live in constant yearning to go in search of
the lost, never settling for simple administration.
He called on his
fellow priests never to be too lax or too severe, but to be merciful,
taking care of the sinner and accompanying him on the journey of
reconciliation.
And he urged them never to forget that they were
plucked from the flock, reminding them to always defend themselves
against the “rust” of spiritual worldliness” and the “spiritual
corruption which threatens the very nature of a shepherd”.
Pope
Francis concluded telling his brother priests to be loving disciples of
the Good Shepherd, guarding their own precious and fragile flocks with
tenderness, and never forgetting that special “preferential option” for
the poor.