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Pope Francis has said men studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood should be properly trained or the Church could risk “creating little monsters” more concerned with their careers than serving people.
Describing the formation of future priests as a work of art, not a police action, the Holy Father urged the major superior of priests religious orders to “form their hearts.”
If we fail to form their hearts “We are creating little monsters. And then these little monsters mould the people of God,” the pope warned.
“This really gives me goose bumps,” he said.
Francis said men should not enter the priesthood to seek a comfortable life or to rise up the clerical career ladder.
“The ghost to fight against is the image of religious life understood as an escape or hiding place in face of an ‘external’ difficult and complex world,” he told them.
Priests had to have “real contact with the poor” and other marginalized members of society, he said.
“This is really very important to me: the need to become acquainted with reality by experience, to spend time walking on the periphery in order really to become acquainted with the reality and life-experiences of people,” he told them.
“If this does not happen we then run the risk of being abstract ideologists or fundamentalists, which is not healthy.”
The Pope’s comments were first made in November.
They were made in a three-hour, closed-door meeting he had in late November and this is the first time the comments have been published in their entirety by Italian Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica.
Sources
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