To the Religious Men of Sao Paulo (3 July 1980)

On Thursday, 3 July 1980, the Holy Father addressed the Religious Men in São Paulo, whom he warned of “the temptation to abandon the characteristic features of their religious family to blend in with the others and the temptation to leave the works they created to devote themselves to what for convention is called ‘direct pastoral care’”. “The richness of the Church and of her service to men lies in variety.”

Dear children, called by God to a special consecration in religious life.

He who feels, at this moment of his pilgrimage through Brazil, the sincere joy of meeting you is the same one who, as Archbishop of Krakow, sought every opportunity to meet the men and women religious of his diocese and, as Bishop of Rome, he tries to be with them, both by receiving them in his home and by going to meet them on pastoral visits to Roman parishes. I do this for two reasons: because I am convinced of the efficacy of religious in the life and pastoral action of the Church at all levels, and because I am deeply aware of the inestimable value of religious life in itself.

Religious in the pastoral care of the Church

1. What can you say, Brazilian religious - Brazilian by birth or by adoption - about the presence of religious in the pastoral action of the Church? Preparing myself inwardly for this visit, I bent over with affectionate attention to the history of the Church in this country and it was a revelation for me to discover how much this history is, in all its extension, linked - at times one would say identified - to the tireless missionary activity of countless religious of various families.

Religious are the first apostles of the newly discovered land - and we can mention as a tribute to all of them one of the greatest: that admirable José de Anchieta whom I proclaimed blessed, with intimate and particular satisfaction, less than two weeks ago. Religious were the majority of priests dedicated to the evangelization of the Indians, to their education in full respect of their identity and, whenever necessary, to their defense, even with personal sacrifice. Religious still form just over half of the Brazilian clergy today. I don't know of other countries that can count 193 religious among their 343 Bishops, and of them two Cardinals of the Holy Church, according to a statistic dated 12-31-1979!

What to tell you more? For the Church of Brazil, your presence is not a superfluous thing that can be done without, but a vital necessity. Some points will make this presence more and more effective:

– first, that religious priests show themselves capable of a loyal and disinterested relationship with diocesan priests, whose tasks they are called to share not as an exception, but in a habitual manner;

– second, that lay religious learn more and more to integrate their activity into an overall project, which is that of the whole Church, at both the diocesan and national level;

– third, that in the spirit of the document "Mutuae Relationes", religious superiors seek, accept and cultivate a frank and filial dialogue with the pastors placed by the Spirit of God to govern his Church. In this sense, the importance of the relations between the national conference of bishops, which is responsible for drawing up and establishing pastoral plans for the country, and the conference of religious, which assumes the task of promoting , making sure that it remains faithful to its deepest roots and to the charism that characterizes it.

The identity of religious life

2. And here we enter the second aspect: the profound identity of religious life. It is not because it is useful for pastoral care that religious life occupies a well-defined place in the Church and an indisputable value. The opposite is true: religious life lends an effective service to pastoral care "because" and "if" it remains firmly faithful to the place it occupies in the Church and to the charisms that characterize this place.

It is impossible to attempt to make even a summary of the theology of religious life here. But it won't be too much - almost like a living memory of this meeting with the Pope - to mention some aspects.

The first, which enjoys the consensus of all and is not even the subject of discussion, is that when we speak of religious life we ​​are referring to something very precise in the experience of the Church, at least with regard to the essential elements.

Every Christian has full and legitimate freedom, according to his conscience, to enter or not into religious life. But it is not his job to define or redimension what is essential in religious life, prescinding from life, history and, I repeat, the two thousand-year-old experience of the Church.

This "essential" was recently reaffirmed by the Council, and by some documents which give its authentic interpretation in this matter. You know well what this essential is:

1) Religious life is a “Schola Dominici Servitii”, according to the beautiful formula of Saint Benedict (St. Benedict, Regula, Prol. 45), an applied, loving, persevering apprenticeship of one who wants only one thing in life: to serve the Gentleman. All the other dimensions of religious life are placed in the perspective of this service, as underlined by the Second Vatican Council.

2) Religious life, the Council teaches, is not placed in the Church on the level of institutional structures (it is not a hierarchical rank, nor is it added as a third element between pastors and lay people), but on the line of charisms, and more exactly in the dynamism of that holiness which is the primordial vocation of the Church. The primary reason why a Christian becomes religious is not to assume a place, responsibility or task in the Church, but to sanctify oneself. This is his duty and his responsibility, "the rest will be given to him in addition." This is her service to the Church: the Church needs this school of holiness, in order to concretely realize her own vocation to holiness.

3) If the witness expected from the lay person is that of secularity, of action in temporal realities, the witness connatural to religious life in general and to every religious in particular is that of the Beatitudes, lived in everyday life; it is that of the Absolute of God before whom all the rest, even the most important temporal commitments, become viscerally relative; it is therefore the testimony of the invisible and finally that of the "parousia" which must already be lived in hope from this life.

4) For all of this, the total consecration that each religious makes of himself to God with vows, which actualize the evangelical counsels in his life, proves to be important in religious life. This total consecration will mean for him the most profound and genuine, fullest liberation, which will lead him to greater communion with God and with his brothers, to greater participation in the divine life and in the community of men, starting with the community of those who they seek with him the face of God. This total consecration brings with it, as a consequence, total availability.

Throughout its history, the Church has always experienced that it could count on religious for the most delicate missions.

5) From all this it follows that the religious could not fail to be a man of prayer, a great prayer. This applies to contemplatives, but it also applies to any religious.

In the light of this essential point and by applying some of its aspects concretely, I want to say to you, dear brothers and children, a few words of encouragement and stimulus for you.

First of all, I recall that the Church in various recent documents has spoken of the renewal of religious life. I think it is superfluous to underline that in order to be healthy and correspond to the thought of the Church and therefore to God's plan, this renewal cannot become absolute by becoming an end in itself and prescinding from valid criteria. Two criteria, among others, appear to be the most important: the first is that religious life (and concretely every religious community) does not renew itself in earnest if the aim of the renewal is, in practice. the search for the easiest and most comfortable, but only if this aim is the search for the most authentic and most coherent with the aims of religious life itself. The second criterion is that religious life is renewed to become even more a path to holiness.

Here the Lord's phrase which says "by the fruit one knows the tree" applies in a particularly sensitive way. For what depends on us, we will have to do everything to ensure that it cannot be said that the renewal of religious life has led to its relaxation and then to its dissolution.

In the light of these criteria, I must tell you: humbly carry out the desired renewal of religious life. It deserves the most serious efforts of religious families and conferences of religious at all levels.

Secondly, I would like to point out the originality of the religious presence in the world. This point has already been schematized on other occasions as follows: there are two forms of presence in the world: one physical, direct, material, the other invisible and spiritual, but no less real for this. The laity, inasmuch as they ensure their vocation of physical presence in the world, need that strong lymph which comes to them precisely from the spiritual presence of religious and would feel the lack of it if, for the intoxication of the "immersion of the world" , religious would end up denying the Church the contribution of what is their own. This is not an invitation to alienation; on the contrary, it is an invitation to think that in the Church, according to the concept of Saint Paul, clear difference continues to be important (and not confusion!

The presence of religious in temporal struggles will never be fruitful in the long term (but will it also be so in the immediate term?) if it takes place at the cost of even the most humble essential values ​​of religious life.

Third reflection: in the search for collaboration there is a frequent temptation to dissolve as far as possible, almost to the point of extinction, that which characterizes and gives a face to religious life and to religious. It seems evident that this is not positive either for religious life or for collaboration: a religious priest, immersed in pastoral care alongside diocesan priests, should clearly show with his attitudes that he is religious. The community should be able to hear it. The same could be said of a non-priest religious or a religious in their respective collaboration with lay people.

Last reflection, in the same line as the previous one: the temptation to abandon the characteristic features of their religious family to blend in with the others and the temptation to leave the works they created to devote themselves to what for convention is called "direct pastoral care". It seems that the facts are already beginning to show that the spiritual richness of the Church and of her service to men lies in variety. There is an impoverishment whenever everyone, under the pretext of unity or impressed by a certain priority, starts doing the same thing. I hope that religious can help the Church to continue to be present in the most diverse fields of her pastoral action: education, assistance, care of the sick, assistance to orphans, exercise of charity, etc ...

I am sure that the human community in general, as well as the ecclesial community, will be grateful to religious life for this.

I just have to bless you in the name of the Lord. As I do so, I ask the Lord that you be, among men and for their good, witnesses and heralds of the "mirabilia Dei" and the "investigabiles divitias Christi".

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