Pope calls for continued renewal of religious life

Dec 04, 2014

VATICAN: Pope Francis called upon religious communities to continue the renewal begun 50 years ago at the Second Vatican Council.

The Pontiff, a Jesuit, is the first member of a religious community to serve as Pope since Gregory XVI (1831-46).

“In the part of the Lord’s vineyard represented by those who have chosen to imitate Christ more closely through the profession of the evangelical counsels, new grape has matured and new wine has been distilled,” Pope Francis said in a November 27 meeting with the members of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

“During these days, you have proposed to discern the quality and the maturing of the ‘new wine’ that was prepared in the long season of renewal, and at the same time, to confirm that the wineskins that contain it, represented by the institutional forms present today in consecrated life, are adequate to contain this ‘new wine’ and to foster its full maturation,” he continued.

“As I have reminded at other times, we must not be afraid to leave the ‘old wineskins,’ that is, to renew those habits and structures that, in the life of the Church and, therefore, also in consecrated life, we recognize as no longer responding to what God asks today for His Kingdom to advance in the world.”

Pope Francis also listed several “areas of weakness that it is possible to verify today in consecrated life”: resistance to change of some sectors; the diminished force of attraction; the number-- not irrelevant-- of abandonments; the fragility of certain formative itineraries; the anxiety over institutional and ministerial tasks at the expense of the spiritual life; the difficult integration of the cultural and generational diversities; a problematic balance in the exercise of authority and in the use of goods.