Pope Francis shared lessons from a predecessor on the 100th anniversary of the election of Pope Pius XI to the Papacy.
The lessons came with Francis received in audience today, in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the Community of the Pontifical Lombard Seminary in Rome. Not so coincidentally, Piux XI graduated from that institution. However, Pope Francis wasn’t just reminising but pointed out some important changes Pius XI made that have relevance today.
“No sooner elected, Pius XI chose to appear no longer inside Saint Peter’s Basilica, but from the Loggia outside,” the Holy Father recalled. “Thus he wished that his first Urbi et Orbi blessing be addressed to the city of Rome and to the whole world. With this gesture he reminded us that it’s necessary to open oneself, to widen the horizon of the ministry to the world’s dimensions, to reach every child that God desires to embrace with His love.
“Please, let’s not stay barricaded in the sacristy and not cultivate small closed groups where we pamper ourselves and are tranquil. There is a world that waits for the Gospel and the Lord desires His Pastors to be conformed to Him, carrying in their heart and on their shoulders the expectations and burdens of the flock. Open, compassionate and merciful hearts, and industrious and generous hands, which are soiled and wounded out of love, as those of Jesus on the cross. Thus the ministry becomes a blessing of God for the world.”
The second lesson Pope Francis pointed to came from the first homily Pius XI delivered. That homily addressed the question: “What can I offer to the Lord?”
“It’s a good question, which you can apply to all that you are doing now to prepare yourselves for the mission. What can I offer is a question that doesn’t revolve around you, the desire for that chair, that parish, that post in the Curia, no. It’s a question that calls to open the heart to availability and service.”
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The Holy Father’s Address
Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning!
I thank the Rector for the words he addressed to me and I welcome you. I’m happy that together with you priests there are people that with their service animate the life of the Seminary and form the great “Lombard” family. We meet again today on the occasion of the one hundred years of the election of Pope Pius XI, your former student — one of the first students! — who always had at heart “his dear” Seminary, for which he provided the areas in which you find yourselves, in the shadow of the Salus Populi Romani. It’s good that you are there and it is also the occasion for me to think of you often. From these roots linked to Pius XI, let’s try to get some ideas: not to cultivate nostalgias of the past and to close ourselves to the novelty of the Spirit, who invites us to live this today, but to retrace prophetic signs for your ministry and your mission, in particular at the service of the Church and of the Italian people.
No sooner elected, Pius XI chose to appear no longer inside Saint Peter’s Basilica, but from the Loggia outside. Thus he wished that his first Urbi et Orbi blessing be addressed to the city of Rome and to the whole world. With this gesture he reminded us that it’s necessary to open oneself, to widen the horizon of the ministry to the world’s dimensions, to reach every child that God desires to embrace with His love. Please, let’s not stay barricaded in the sacristy and not cultivate small closed groups where we pamper ourselves and are tranquil. There is a world that waits for the Gospel and the Lord desires His Pastors to be conformed to Him, carrying in their heart and on their shoulders the expectations and burdens of the flock. Open, compassionate, and merciful hearts, and industrious and generous hands, which are soiled and wounded out of love, as those of Jesus on the cross. Thus the ministry becomes a blessing of God for the world.
That gesture of Pius XI was worth more than a thousand words. In these years you study and reflect, this is a gift of God. However, your knowledge must never become abstracted from life and from history. A Church does not serve the Gospel that has so many things to say, but whose words lack unction and do not touch people’s flesh. To have words of life, science must bow to the Spirit in prayer and then inhabit the concrete situations of the Church and of the world. What is necessary is the witness of life: be priests burning with the desire to take the Gospel to the roads of the world, in neighborhoods and houses, especially to the poorest and most forgotten places — witness and gestures as that first gesture of Pius XI.
A second point. In his first solemn homily Pope Ratti spoke of the mission and, more than giving answers, he invited to ask oneself a question: “What can I offer to the Lord?” (Homily on the 300th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Propaganda Fide Congregation, June 4, 1922). It’s a good question, which you can apply to all that you are doing now to prepare yourselves for the mission. What can I offer is a question that doesn’t revolve around you, the desire for that chair, that parish, that post in the Curia, no. It’s a question that calls to open the heart to availability and service.
Let us ask ourselves, “What can I offer?” at the beginning of every day. Often, here in Italy also, ecclesial discourses are reduced to sterile internal dialectics between one who is an innovator and one who is a conservative, between one who prefers this politician and one who prefers the other, and the central point is forgotten: to be Church to live and spread the Gospel. Let’s not be concerned about small kitchen gardens; there is a whole world thirsty for Christ. Dear friends, I exhort you to cultivate enthusiastically in these years and in this city in both the Roman and Lombard universal dimension, an open, available, and missionary heart!
I draw the last point from one of Pius XI’s numerous social encyclicals. I’ll read a few words, written almost a century ago and yet very current: “What wounds the eyes is that in our times there is not only a concentration of wealth but the accumulation of enormous power, of a despotic control of the economy in the hands of a few. [. . . ] This power becomes more despotic than ever in those that, holding the money in their hands, do so as masters; where they are in some way distributors of the blood itself, of which the economic organism lives, and they have in their hand, so to speak, the soul of the economy” (Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno, 105-106).
How true all this is now and how tragic, while the gap between the few rich and the many poor is ever wider. In this context of inequality, which the pandemic has increased, you will find yourselves living and working as priests of Vatican Council II, as signs and instruments of men’s communion with God and between themselves (cf. Lumen Gentium, 1). Hence, be weavers of communion, effacers of inequalities, attentive Pastors to the signs of the people’s suffering. Through the knowledge that you are acquiring, be also competent and courageous in raising prophetic words in the name of those that don’t have a voice.
Great tasks await you. To carry them out, I invite you to ask God to make you dream about the beauty of the Church: to dream about the Italian Church of tomorrow, more faithful to the spirit of the Gospel, more free, fraternal, and joyful in witnessing Jesus, animated by the ardor of reaching those that have not known the “God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3). A Church that cultivates a communion stronger than any distinction and that is even more passionate towards the poor, in whom Jesus is present. May Saint Ambrose and Saint Charles accompany you and the Salus Populi protect you. I bless you and you, please, pray for me. Thank you!
[Original text: Italian. [Exaudi Translation by Virginia M. Forrester ]
