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Pope Francis has included a quotation from a 30-year-old statement of the New Zealand Bishops in his latest Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate: on the call to holiness in today’s world.
The quotation is taken from the New Zealand Bishops’s statement Healing Love – In support of Married People and Divorced Catholics, which the New Zealand bishops issued in 1988.
In the first chapter [#18] of the exhortation the pope writes:
The New Zealand bishops rightly teach us that we are capable of loving with the Lord’s unconditional love, because the risen Lord shares his powerful life with our fragile lives:
“His love set no limits and, once given, was never taken back. It was unconditional and remained faithful.
“To love like that is not easy because we are often so weak. But just to try to love as Christ loved us shows that Christ shares his own risen life with us.
“In this way, our lives demonstrate his power at work – even in the midst of human weakness”.
It is not the first time Pope Francis has made reference to New Zealand is his formal documents.
In his encyclical Laudato Si’ [#95], published in 2016, he made reference to the New Zealand Catholic bishops who had asked what the Christian commandment “thou shalt not kill” could mean when “20 percent of the world’s population consumes resources at a rate that robs the poor nations and future generations of what they need to survive.”
That came from a New Zealand bishops’ Statement on Environmental Issues in 2006.
Philip Matthews writing for Stuff noted the quotation would have been discovered as the Pope started his research.
“To be fair, bishops from many other places were quoted too. New Zealand Cardinal John Dew sees it as indicative of a new, more open leadership style,” Matthews said.
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