Pope encourages PIME missionaries
to evangelize with urgency
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| Pope Francis greets Fr.Ferruccio Brambillasca, Superior General of PIME (Vatican Media) |
Pope Francis urges members of the Pontifical Institute for
Foreign Missions to proclaim the Gospel with passion and a sense of urgency.
By Devin Watkins
The Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, or PIME, was
founded in Italy in 1850 as a society of diocesan priests and lay people who
dedicate their lives to missionary activities.
Pope Francis met Monday with participants in the Institute’s
15th General Assembly, reminding them of the “co-responsibility
of all dioceses to spread the Gospel to peoples who do not yet know Jesus
Christ”.
He said that, at the time when PIME was founded, this was a
new idea, promoted by Pope Pius IX. Previously, most missionary work was
carried out by religious orders. Members of PIME devote their lives to foreign
missions through a promise, rather than by taking the religious vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience.
Family of apostles
Pope Francis said the Society’s history is “marked by the
luminous ray of holiness of many of its members,” 19 of whom gave their lives
as martyrs.
“Yours is a ‘family of apostles’, an international community
of priests and lay people who live in communion of life and activity,” he said.
The Pope noted that the work of evangelization is “the
proper grace and vocation of your Institute”. And he reminded PIME members that
the mission ad gentes is not theirs to possess, because the driving
impulse comes from God alone.
“Only by inserting ourselves into this divine initiative, by
imploring this divine initiative, may we too become – with Him and in Him –
evangelizers,” he said, citing Evangelii Gaudium (n.112).
Passion and urgency
Pope Francis praised the PIME general assembly for seeking
to put the mission at the center of the community’s life, and encouraged a
sense of passion and urgency for missionary activity.
“Let us not fear to undertake – with trust in God and great
courage – a missionary option capable of transforming everything, so that the
Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and
structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world.”
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