These quotes are from the Pope’s recent interview in a Jesuit magazine. For the full text visit: www. americamagazine.org/pope-interview.
Bergoglio the sinner
“‘I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner. …I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon. …Here, this is me, a sinner on whom the Lord has turned his gaze. And this is what I said when they asked me if I would accept my election as pontiff.’ Then the Pope whispers in Latin: ‘I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance.’”
Being in a community
“A thing that is really important for me: community. I was always looking for a community. I did not see myself as a priest on my own. I need a community. And you can tell this by the fact that I am here in Santa Marta. …I cannot live without people. I need to live my life with others.”
Reforms take time
“Many think that changes and reforms can take place in a short time. I believe that we always need time to lay the foundations for real, effective change. And this is the time of discernment. Sometimes discernment instead urges us to do precisely what you had at first thought you would do later. And that is what has happened to me in recent months. Discernment is always done in the presence of the Lord, looking at the signs, listening to the things that happen, the feeling of the people, especially the poor. …Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.”
Vatican II’s importance
“‘Vatican II was a re-reading of the Gospel in light of contemporary culture,’ says the Pope. ‘Vatican II produced a renewal movement that simply comes from the same Gospel. Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation. Yes, there are hermeneutics of continuity and discontinuity, but one thing is clear: the dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualising its message for today – which was typical of Vatican II – is absolutely irreversible.’”
No one is saved alone
“The image of the Church I like is that of the holy, faithful people of God. This is the definition I often use, and then there is that image from the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (No. 12). Belonging to a people has a strong theological value. In the history of salvation, God has saved a people.
“There is no full identity without belonging to a people. No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships.”
The Church is for all
“This Church is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people. We must not reduce the bosom of the universal Church to a nest protecting our mediocrity. And the Church is mother; the Church is fruitful.
“When I perceive negative behaviour in ministers of the Church or in consecrated men or women, the first thing that comes to mind is: ‘Here’s an unfruitful bachelor’ or ‘Here’s a spinster’. They are neither fathers nor mothers, in the sense that they have not been able to give spiritual life. Instead, for example, when I read the life of the Salesian missionaries who went to Patagonia, I read a story of the fullness of life, of fruitfulness.”
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)
To be continued.