ROME – Pope Francis told the 21 new cardinals he created on Saturday, who come from all over the world, that their diversity is a gift which must contribute to a unified “symphony” of various but united voices capable of credible evangelization.
Speaking to those gathered in St Peter’s Square for the consistory on 30 September, Francis said, “Diversity is necessary; it is indispensable. However, each sound must contribute to the common design.”
“This is why mutual listening is essential: Each musician must listen to the others. If one listens only to himself, however sublime his sound may be, it will not benefit the symphony; and the same would be the case if one section of the orchestra did not listen to the others, but played as if it were alone, as if it were the whole,” he said.
Pope Francis presided over a highly-anticipated consistory on Saturday during which he gave a red hat to several key allies, of whom 18 are under 80 and therefore eligible to vote for his successor. Among them were his controversial friend and ghostwriter Victor Manuel Fernández, the new head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The day before the consistory abuse-survivors support groups called on Fernández to resign, saying that his appointment was “totally inappropriate” in light of his alleged mishandling of abuse complaints when he was Archbishop of La Plata, in Argentina. Meanwhile they accused Pope Francis of “poor judgment, but also gross disrespect to Catholic victims around the world.”
The ceremony went ahead regardless. Among the new cardinals are also Robert Prevost, head of the Vatican Dicastery for Bishops, who is American; Hong Kong bishop Stephen Chow; Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa; and Christophe Pierre, the papal nuncio to the United States. Others hail from Argentina, Poland, Spain, Tanzania, Malaysia, France, Venezuela, Italy and South Sudan.
In his homily, Pope Francis reflected on the day’s reading, which recounted the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, focusing on the Jewish community outside of the upper room where the apostles were gathered, and who came from all over but were able to understand one another thanks to the Holy Spirit.
Francis said there was a “surprise” hidden in the passage “in which, with joy, I seemed to recognize the humour of the Holy Spirit, so to speak.”
While the church’s pastors typically associate themselves with the apostles in the upper room, Francis said he associated them with those who “do not belong to the group of disciples” but who gathered outside “upon hearing the noise of the rushing wind.”
“The Apostles were ‘all Galileans,’ while the people who gathered were ‘from every nation under heaven,’ just like the Bishops and Cardinals of our time,” he said.
Pope Francis said this role reversal makes one thing, and implies “applying to ourselves – I will put myself first – the experience of those Jews who by a gift of God found themselves protagonists of the event of Pentecost, that is of the ‘baptism’ by the Holy Spirit that gave birth to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
This perspective, he said, is one of rediscovering “with amazement the gift of having received the Gospel “in our own tongues.”
He urged the new cardinals to be grateful for the experience of “having been evangelized” and called from all over the world, yet forming one church, which he called, “Mother Church, who speaks all languages, is One and is Catholic.”
Noting that faith is passed on through one’s family, Francis told the new cardinals that they will only be “evangelizers” to the extent that they allow themselves to “cherish in our hearts the wonder and gratitude of having been evangelized, even of being evangelized.”
Referring to the moment of Christian baptism, the Oope said it is not a thing of the past, but is rather a creative act that is continually renewed by God, and a mystery in which the faithful perpetually live.
The Church, he said, “does not live ‘off her name,’ still less does she live off an archeological patrimony, however precious and noble. The Church, and every baptized member, lives the today of God, through the action of the Holy Spirit.”
“You new cardinals have come from different parts of the world, and the same Spirit that made the evangelization of your peoples fruitful now renews in you your vocation and mission in and for the Church,” he said.
Comparing the College of Cardinals to an orchestra, he said it must represent “harmony and synodality of the Church.” Many of the new cardinals will remain in Rome to attend the Synod on Synodality in October.
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