“Some are surprised that the Pope came to find the evangelicals”, but “I came to find the brothers”. “THE CHURCH IS ONE IN DIVERSITY”
So, Francesco, yesterday in Caserta greeted the local Pentecostal community headed by pastor Giovanni Traettino , longtime friend of Bergoglio. “For the Pope it is tempting to say ‘I am the church, you are the sect’. But Jesus – added the Pontiff in the off-the-cuff speech reconstructed by those present at the meeting – prayed for unity and the Holy Spirit makes unity, the church is one in diversity ”. “The division of Christians is a sad story, and on this path of unity it will do us good to touch the flesh of Christ and go to the peripheries, where there are so many brothers in need of God”.THE DOUBLE VISIT TO CASERTA In
recent weeks, he had discussed the Pope’s private trip to Caserta to visit the Pentecostal community. Controversies that had “forced” the Vatican to review the program, hurriedly fixing an appointment also with Catholics, which was held last Saturday: meeting with the local clergy and mass for Saint Anne, patron saint of the city, open to all the faithfuls. Traditionalist Catholic sectors and not indifferent parts of the evangelical community had turned up their noses at Francis’s decision. The perplexities of the evangelicals
Yesterday, at the end of the Pope’s private visit to Caserta, the Italian Evangelical Alliancehe issued a press release in which he affirmed how distances remained intact, also observing that “ecumenism is built on charity and truth, not on common humanity”. The vice president of Aei, Leonardo De Chirico, commented: “The attitude of the Roman church has changed, not the substance. The Catholic Church has not intervened in any of the areas which, five centuries ago, led to the Protestant reform. Friendship is fine, collaboration is fine where possible, but we must be careful ”. THE APARECIDA DOCUMENT
Francis is well acquainted with the evangelical reality, so present in the South American continent (37 percent of the 500 million Pentecostals around the world come from there), particularly in Brazil. Not surprisingly, the Document drawn up at the end of the V conference of the Latin American episcopate of Aparecida (2007), focused on the need to let the church go out on mission, also to recover the ground lost over the decades for the benefit of evangelical communities, especially Pentecostals. . THE WORD “SEVEN” ARCHIVED “
Until yesterday the negative category of ‘sect’ was used for the Pentecostals: and it is with regard to this controversial qualification that Francis said another significant word, inviting them to overcome it”, he wrote today in the Corriere della Sera Luigi Accattoli, who observed that “it is easy to understand how this revision of the language of controversies has a relevance that goes beyond the boundaries of the churches. It remains to be seen whether he intended to propose the overcoming of the term ‘sect’ for Pentecostals only, or for those who refer to the Christian name outside the historical denominations: he has not clarified it, but one can imagine that his intention was the widest “.
