2014-01-03 Vatican Radio(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has told those in
Religious Life to “wake up the world”, according to an article appearing in La Civiltà Cattolica, the Rome-based Jesuit weekly.
Editor Antonio Spadaro, SJ, has written an article recounting the
private meeting last November between Pope Francis and the Union of
Superiors General of religious men at the end of their 82nd General
Assembly.
The 15-page article (available in English at the La Civiltà
Cattolica website) documents the views of Pope Francis on religious
life.
“Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different way of
doing things, of acting, of living! It is possible to live differently
in this world,” Pope Francis said.
“We are speaking of an eschatological outlook, of the values of the
Kingdom incarnated here, on this earth. It is a question of leaving
everything to follow the Lord. No, I do not want to say “radical.”
Evangelical radicalness is not only for religious: it is demanded
of all. But religious follow the Lord in a special was, in a prophetic
way. It is this witness that I expect of you. Religious should be men
and women who are able to wake the world up.”
The article also revealed he has asked the Congregation for
Religious to revise, Mutuae Relationes, the 1978 instruction issued by
the Congregation for Religious and by the Congregation for Bishops
(concerning the relations between bishops and religious in the Church,
which he called “outdated.”