Pagola to Pope Francis

Get the evangelical renewal going!

José Antonio Pagola

Priest and theologian

Dear brother Francis:

Ever since you were elected to be the humble “Rock” on which Jesus wishes to keep on building his Church, I have carefully followed your speeches.

I have just returned from Rome where I was able to see you embrace children, bless the sick and helpless and greet the crowds. They say you love people, are simple, humble and friendly… and so much else.

I think I see in you something more, much more. I had a chance to see St. Peter’s square and the Via della Conciliazione full of enthusiastic people.

Within a few months you have become “good news” for the Church and even much beyond the Church. Why? Almost without realizing it, you are bringing to the world the Good News of Jesus.   

You are creating a new climate in the Church – more evangelical and more human. You are bringing us the Spirit of Christ. People who have abandoned the Christian faith tell me you help them to trust more in life and in the goodness of the human being. Some who know no paths to God admit to me that a small light has lit up within them which invites them to think again about their attitude to the ultimate Mystery of existence.

I know that in the Church we need very  deep reforms to correct the deviations fostered for many centuries, but during these last years a conviction has been growing in me. For these reforms to be able to be brought about, we first need a conversion at a more deep and radical level.

Quite simply, we need to return to Jesus, to have our Christianity rooted more truly and more faithfully in his person, his message and his project of the Kingdom of God.

That is why I wish to tell you what it is that appeals to me most in your ministry as Bishop of Rome at the beginning of your career.

I thank you for embracing children and holding them close to your heart. You  are helping us to recover that prophetic gesture of Jesus so forgotten in the Church, but so important to understand what he wanted from his followers. According to the Gospel story, Jesus called the Twelve, placed a little child in the midst of them, embraced him and said to them: Whoever receives a little child like this one  in my name receives me.”

We had forgotten that in the middle of the Church, drawing the attention of all have to be  the little ones, the weakest and the most fragile and vulnerable. It is important that you are among us as a “Rock” on which Jesus builds his Church, but it is as important or more so that you are in the midst of us embracing the little ones and blessing the sick and helpless, to remind us how we are to receive Jesus. This prophetic gesture seems to me decisive at this time in which the world runs the risk of being dehumanized by evading the responsibility for those of no account.

I thank you for calling us time and again to get outside the Church to enter into the life of people who suffer and enjoy  life, who struggle and work hard; the world  where God wants to build a more human, just and supportive society.

I believe that the most serious and subtle heresy that has penetrated Christianity is to have made the Church the centre of everything displacing the project of the Kingdom of God from the horizon.

John Paul II reminded us  that the Church is not an end in itself, but only the seed, sign, and instrument of the Kingdom of God; but his words were lost among many other discourses.

It makes me very happy when you call us to get out of ourselves to reach out to the existential periphery, where we will meet the poor, the victims, the sick, the unfortunate ones.

I enjoy underlining your words: We must build bridges, not walls to defend the faith; we need a Church with open doors, not of people who control the faith; “ the Church does not grow through proselytism, but through attraction, witness and preaching. “ I seem to hear the voice of Jesus who from the Vatican urges us: “Go and announce that the Kingdom of God is near.” “Go and heal the sick” , “what you have freely received, freely give.”

I thank you, too, for your constant calls to be converted to the Gospel. How well you know the Church. Your freedom to name our sins amazes me.  You do not do so in the language of a moralist, but in the power of the Gospel: the incidents of envy, social climbing, the desire for wealth, disinformation, defamation and calumny , arrogance and clerical hypocrisy, “spiritual worldliness” and selfishly materialistic, salon Christians,  believers who are museum pieces, Christians who wear funereal aspects.

Salt that has lost its taste worries you a lot, a salt that doesn’t have any taste. And you call us to be disciples who learn to live life modeled on Jesus.  

You do not call us only to an individual conversion. You urge us on to a structural  renewal of the Church. We are not used to hearing such language.  Deaf to the call for renewal of Vatican II, we  have forgotten that Jesus invited his followers “to put new wine in new wineskins.”

That is why, your homily for the feast of Pentecost fills me with hope.  “Novelty always fills us with a little fear, because we feel more safe if we have everything under control, it is we who build, program and plan our lives according to our mindsets, feelings of security and tastes… We are afraid God will lead us through new ways, draw us out of our frequently limited, closed , egoistic horizons to open us out to his own.

This is why you beg us to ask ourselves sincerely: “Are we open to the surprises God has for us, or do we shut ourselves in out of fear to the newness of the Holy Spirit? Are we ready to follow the new ways the novelty God presents us, or do we entrench ourselves in outdated structures that have lost the ability to respond? Your message and your spirit are announcing a new future for the Church.

I want to   end these lines by humbly expressing a desire. Perhaps you may not be able to make great reforms, but you can move forward the evangelical renewal in the whole Church. Surely, you can take suitable measures so that the future bishops of the dioceses of the whole world have the personal qualities and pastoral approach capable of promoting that conversion to Jesus which you try to encourage from Rome.

Francisco, you are a gift of God. Thanks!