Pope in Chile: the Church's mission is for everyone, avoid clericalism

Francis met Chilean bishops and priests and visited a women's prison. With the priests he returned to talk about the drama of pedophilia and in the nunciature he received a small group of victims of sexual abuse by clergy. The meeting took place in a strictly private form and no one else was present.

Santiago de Chile (AsiaNews) - Prisoners and victims of clergy sex abuse as well as bishops, priests and consecrated persons. The second part of the first day of Pope Francis in Chile was dedicated to them, united by the message that all are part of a wounded humanity, saved by divine mercy and united by the mission of the Church that belongs to everyone. And being a priest or bishop, therefore, does not mean being part of an elite.

He said this explicitly to the bishops, whom he met in the sacristy of the cathedral of Santiago, urging them not to be afraid to divest themselves of what, in today's secularized world, "distances from the missionary mandate", which belongs to everyone. Not being aware of being part of God's people "as servants and not masters" has the risk of falling into one of the " can lead us to one of the temptations that is most damaging to the missionary outreach that we are called to promote: clericalism, which ends up as a caricature of the vocation we have received. A failure to realize that the mission belongs to the entire Church, and not to the individual priest or bishop, limits the horizon, and even worse, stifles all the initiatives that the Spirit may be awakening in our midst.  Let us be clear about this.  The laypersons are not our peons, or our employees. T hey don’t have to parrot back whatever we say”.

Francis therefore said he was " concerned about the formation of seminarians, that they be pastors at the service of the People of God; as a pastor should be, through the means of doctrine, discipline, the sacraments, by being close to the people, through works of charity, but also with the awareness that they are the People of God.".

During the greetings, the Pope recalled Msgr. Bernardino Piñera Carvallo. “He is the oldest bishop in the world, not only in age but also in years of episcopate”  - soon, at 103, he will be 60 years a bishop – “who was present for four sessions of the Second Vatican Council.  A marvellous living memory”.

The "community" was also at the center of the meeting with the priests to whom Francis again spoke of the drama of pedophilia with the pain that it causes in the ecclesial community. "I know - he said - the pain that cases of child abuse have caused and I carefully follow how much you do to overcome this serious and painful evil. Pain for the damage and suffering of the victims and their families, who saw the trust placed in the ministers of the Church betrayed. Pain for the suffering of ecclesial communities; and sorrow for you too, brothers, who in addition to the effort of dedication, have experienced the damage caused by suspicion and questioning, which in some or many may have led to doubt, fear and mistrust".

The Pope then recalled that the risen Jesus did not “reprimand or condemn” Peter who had "disappointed him". Jesus asks him: "Do you love me?". Hence the conscience that "the consecrated person is the one who encounters the signs of the Resurrection in his wounds; who can see the power of the Resurrection in the wounds of the world; who, like Jesus, does not go to out to meet his brothers and sisters with reproach and condemnation ". And the awareness of being wounded "frees us from becoming self-referential,  of believing ourselves superior".

"You must know the despairing Peter to know the transfigured Peter - he concluded - it is the invitation to go from being a Church of desolate and despairing to a Servant Church of so many despondent who live right beside us".

During the day, Pope Francis met a small group of victims of sexual abuse by the clergy at the nunciature. The meeting, announced by the director of the Vatican Press Office, Greg Burke, took place in a strictly private form. No one else was present: only the Pope and the victims. And this so that they could tell their sufferings to Francis, who listened to them and prayed and wept with them.

The Pope's afternoon had begun at the women's prison in Santiago where he met some inmates (pictured), who welcomed him with their children. Being deprived of freedom, he told them, does not mean to stop dreaming, nor to lose dignity. "Dignity is not touched". "Today - he said - you are deprived of freedom, but this does not mean that this situation is definitive" and the goal is reintegration into society. "A punishment without a future, a condemnation without a future is not a human condemnation: it is torture. Every sentence being lived out to pay a debt to society must have a perspective, that is, it must have the horizon of reintegration and preparation for being reintegrated.  This is something you must demand of society.  Always have this outlook, look forwards, towards reintegration into today’s society".

The Pope also said that public safety "should not be reduced to measures of greater control but above all must be built with preventive measures, with work, education and more community life.