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AMBITIOUS
CLIMBERS
RUIN CHURCH Those who ‘use’ others for their own personal interests … are doing great harm to the Church, says Pope Francis
UNDERSCORING the vital contributions of women, Pope Francis said that men and women who are careerists and social climbers using people, the Church and their brothers and sisters in religious life as a springboard for their own personal interests and ambitions are doing enormous harm to the Church. His comments came in remarks on May 8 to 800 leaders of women’s religious orders in Rome for the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superiors General. The group welcomed the Pope with loud applause and with the ululations of the African sisters among them. Pope Francis urged religious never to forget that the power they held was for serving others. “We must never forget that true power, at whatever level, is service, which has its bright summit upon the Cross,” he said, quoting Christ’s words in the Gospel of Matthew:
Off the map ... After Pentecost, most of the Apostles seem to have disappeared from history. Where did they go? - Pages 10-11
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‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them ... But it shall not be so among you.’ Nor could religious live a merely ‘theoretical poverty’, he said. Instead, they must be in close contact with the poor and suffering: “Theoretical poverty doesn’t do anything. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ in the humble, the poor, the sick, and in children.” Poverty, the Pope said, teaches solidarity, sharing and charity and helps to “guard against the material idols that obscure the true meaning of life – poverty, which is learned with the humble, the poor, the sick, and all those who are at the existential margins of life.” The Church needs religious women he said. “What would the Church be without you?” the Pope told the women. Continued - Page 9