The pastoral practice of the church is based and rooted in times gone by and we need to change it, Pope Francis has said.
Speaking to bishops, cardinals and pastoral care workers, Thursday, at the International Pastoral Congress, on the World’s Big Cities, Pope Francis urged them to be creative in order that everyone in these cities can feel the closeness and mercy of God.
He told the Barcelona meeting that the Church needs new maps to help us reposition our thoughts and attitudes.
However, Francis warned, it is important “we must not be disoriented.”
“(Disorientation) would lead us to take the wrong road”, confusing the people who are looking for life, truth and a sense of purpose, the pope told the Big City Pastoral Congress.
Building on his experience as Bishop of Buenos Aires, with a population of 13 million, Francis highlighted four challenges facing Big City mission as:
- making a change in our pastoral mentality
- dialogue with multiculturalism
- religiousness of people, and
- the urban poor.
“Today we are not the only ones that produce culture, we are not the first nor most listened to”, he told the pastoral congress.
Francis told the participants the Church needs to transform itself in order to evangelise in the big cities.
“It’s all about going out and meeting God who lives in cities with the poor. Meeting, listening to, blessing, walking with the people; facilitating the encounter with the Lord”.
Asking for a concrete witness of mercy and tenderness, Francis said we can go where culture is born and sow the mustard seed in the heart of new cultures generated by urban reality.
In concluding, he proposed a two-fold pastoral nuclei
- Go out and facilitate, and
- The Samaritan Church. To be there.
“God lives in cities. We must go and look for him and remain where He is operating” … We must not ignore or despise experiences of God that may be dispersed or mixed up: these experiences ask to be “revealed and not constructed”, Pope Francis said.
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