IMAGE: CNS/L’Osservatore Romano
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN
CITY (CNS) — A nuncio is not simply a “diplomat in a (priest’s)
collar,” but must truly be a priest and bishop who listens, supports and
serves as a channel of God’s mercy, Pope Francis said.
Spending
much of the day Sept. 17 with 106 archbishops who represent him and the Vatican
in countries around the world, Pope Francis thanked the nuncios for their
constant willingness to pack up, move to a new country, learn a new language
and deal with new challenges.
And,
he said, he knew that every four or five years they get another
“sugarcoated” phone call from Rome and do it all again.
Gathered
at the Vatican from their posts around the world, the nuncios had meetings,
Masses and prayer services as part of their Year of Mercy celebration.
At
an early morning Mass, a mid-morning meeting and a luncheon in the Domus
Sanctae Marthae, the pope looked at their personal lives as priests, their
service to local churches as his representative and their diplomatic service in
a world often marked by conflict, fear and attempts to limit religious freedom.
“One
of my deepest concerns regards the selection of future bishops,” he told
the nuncios, who have the task of identifying potential candidates for vacant
dioceses, consulting with people who know them, evaluating their suitability
and forwarding their names to the Vatican.
A
good candidate, he said, must be an authentic witness of the Risen Lord and not
simply someone with an impressive curriculum vitae.
Look
for “bishop-pastors and not princes and functionaries. Please!” the
pope told them.
“You
need to cast your nets wide,” the pope said, and not always rely on
recommendations from the same people. “If we always go fishing in an aquarium,
we will never find them!”
As
representatives of the pope in a certain country, he said, a nuncio must take
the pope’s message and share it locally, helping bishops, priests and laypeople
live it out in their own cultures.
Today,
he said, the message is mercy and concrete signs of closeness to people who are
often confused, in pain and yearning for a word of hope.
In
daily contact with a nation’s bishops, he said, “you touch with your hands
the flesh of the church, the splendor of love that makes it glorious, but also
the wounds and injuries that make it beg for forgiveness.”
A
nuncio is sent to a local church “to support and not only to
correct,” so he must listen before making decisions and reach out to
promote understanding and reconciliation, the pope said.
“See,
analyze and report are essential verbs, but not sufficient in the life of a
nuncio,” he said. “He also must encounter, listen, dialogue, share,
propose and work together” to ensure people know that he truly loves the
local population and the local church to which he has been sent.
“It
is not enough to point a finger or attack those who do not think the way we
do,” the pope told the nuncios. “That is a tactical method of modern
political and cultural wars, but cannot be the church’s method.”
Around the world there are signs of
growing fear, leading people to build walls and dig trenches, he said. “We
can understand the reasons for the fear, but we can never embrace it.”
Pope
Francis urged the nuncios to go out, “open doors, build bridges, weave
ties, maintain friendships, promote unity.”
Obviously,
he said, there is evil in the world and there are situations of injustice and
persecution — especially the persecution of Christians in the Middle East —
that must be denounced.
Protecting
the freedom of the church in the face of any power that tries to silence it is
an enormous task today, the pope said. While diplomatic agreements are
important instruments for guaranteeing the church is free to carry out its
activities, the church will be truly free only if it proclaims the Gospel and
its members are willing to be “a true sign of contradiction” in
societies that deny Gospel truths.
At
the same time, he said, convinced that God is truth, beauty, love and mercy,
and confident that he will be victorious in the end, Christians must
persistently and patiently practice dialogue and educate consciences.
“You
are not asked to be gullible lambs,” he said, but “I encourage you
not to indulge yourselves in a climate of being under siege, giving into the
temptation of feeling sorry for yourself or playing the victim of those who
criticize, goad or even belittle us.”
Mercy
is the true power of the church, Pope Francis told the nuncios. “We don’t
have the right to deprive the world — including in the forum of bilateral and
multilateral diplomatic activity — of this richness, which no one else can
give. This knowledge must push us to dialogue with everyone and, in many cases,
to be a prophetic voice for those marginalized because of their faith, ethnicity
or economic, social and cultural condition.”
Foreign
diplomats are used to writing in code, but Pope Francis told the nuncios
that “mercy must be the cipher of the diplomatic mission of a nuncio.”
Even
in the world of political power, he said, inside every human person there is a
space where the voice of God can reach and mercy is what can tap into it.
“Dialogue
with clarity and do not be afraid that mercy might confuse or diminish the
beauty and strength of truth,” he said. “The completeness of truth is
found only in mercy.”
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