Pope Francis has told Irish bishops their role should be one of a “goalkeeper”, ready to take shots from any direction.
The pope made this observation during a two-hour audience with the bishops, who have been in Rome all week on an “Ad Limina” (to the threshold) visit to the Pope and the Holy See.
Speaking at a news conference
after their audience, Archbishop Eamon Martin, and president of the
Irish Bishops conference, said he and his fellow Bishops had been very
encouraged by the “open attitude” and the “listening mode” of both the
pontiff and the Holy See curia.
Also attending the news conference
were the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, the Bishop of Kildare
Denis Nulty and the Bishop of Limerick, Brendan Leahy.
Both Archbishops stressed the informal, relaxed nature of their audience.
Rather than greet the bishops with a prepared text, the pope sat down beside them in a large group.
Archbishop Eamon Martin said the
conversation, with the aid of an English-speaking interpreter, was about
the Church in Ireland and about “the hopes, the fears and the struggles
of our people”.
Archbishop Martin, one of the small number of Irish bishops present at the last Irish “Ad Limina” visit in 2006, called the meeting “quite extraordinary”.
“He didn’t present us with an
agenda of the things he wanted to talk about. The dominant thing was he
was asking us and challenging us about what it means to be a Bishop in
Ireland or anywhere today,” the Archbishop said.
Instead the pope’s questions were practical, not political. He asked how do we begin a dialogue with young people?
According to Archbishop Martin, the pope told the bishops not to be ideological. “We should meet with people the way they are.”
“He described the bishop as being
like a goalkeeper: the shots keep coming from everywhere. You stand
there and be ready there,” Archbishop Martin said.
The Irish Times asked if
the Irish Church had come to Rome wary of being criticised by a Holy See
disappointed with falling mass attendance in a country which last year
voted in favour of same sex marriage, in direct defiance of Catholic
Church teaching?
The Archbishop of Dublin said the
atmosphere in the Vatican had been “very, very different” and the Irish
bishops “certainly did not have the impression that they were under
investigation or accusation”.
Archbishop Martin also said
meetings with different departments in the Holy See had been “extremely
fruitful, cordial and challenging”.
Asked had the Bishops discussed
with the pope issues including clerical sex abuse, the role of women and
his forthcoming visit to Ireland next year, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin
replied “nothing was off the agenda”.
Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare said
the word conversation best summed up not just the audience with the
pope but also the entire week.