8:17 AM Without evangelisation, Church becomes babysitter, Pope warns | |
 If Catholics do not proclaim Jesus with
their lives, then the Church becomes "not the mother, but the
babysitter,” Pope Francis cautioned in a homily and a separate letter to
his brother bishops in Argentina, reports the Catholic News Agency.
When believers share their faith, "the Church becomes a mother church that produces children (and more) children, because we, the children of the Church, we carry that. But when we do not, the Church is not the mother, but the babysitter, that takes care of the baby – to put the baby to sleep. It is a Church dormant,” Pope Francis stated. The solution to this is "to proclaim Christ, to carry the Church – this fruitful motherhood of the Church – forward,” he said. The Pope first mentioned the importance of being spiritually fruitful during the April 16 Mass he celebrated for employees of the Vatican’s Institute for Works of Religion in St. Martha’s residence. He based his homily on a reading from the Acts of the Apostles, which recalled the lives of the first Christians. "They left their homes,” he recalled, "they brought with them only few belongings, and going from place to place proclaiming the Word. "They were a simple faithful, baptised just a year or so – but they had the courage to go and proclaim,” the Pope said. Pope Francis then turned to a point that he emphasized frequently in Buenos Aires. The early Christians, he stressed, had nothing but "the power of baptism,” which "gave them apostolic courage, the strength of the Spirit.” source: CathNews | |
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