When ordaining 10 new priests on Good Shepherd Sunday on May 7, Pope Francis told them and us priests: “A presbyter who has perhaps studied much theology and has achieved one or two or three advanced degrees but has not learned to carry the cross of Christ is useless. He will be a good academic, a good professor but not a priest.”

What makes me a priest according to Christ’s heart? Am I called to die from an academic indigestion or out of a protracted exhaustion due to my continual visiting the sick, thus touching the flesh of the suffering Christ in them?

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