On Evangelii Gaudium

Archbishop Rino Fisichella presented the Holy Father's Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium document at a Vatican press conference as follows:...

If we were to sum up Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium in a few words, we could say that it is an Apostolic Exhortation written around the theme of Christian joy in order that the Church may rediscover the original source of evangelization in the contemporary world.

Pope Francis offers this document to the Church as a map and guide to her pastoral mission in the near future.

It is an invitation to recover a prophetic and positive vision of reality without ignoring the current challenges.

Pope Francis instills courage and urges us to look ahead despite the present crisis, making the cross and the resurrection of Christ once again our “the victory banner”

Holiness, to which Vatican II calls all of us, makes us love as the Father loves, and brings the fullness of life to the one who is loved, and so is meant to be communicated to the people of God. The Second Vatican Council also taught that bishops, as Our Lord’s chief witnesses, as Francis is now doing, must lead in evangelizing lost souls who do not know the Good Shepherd, proclaiming the whole mystery of Christ to them. Apart from holiness, the fruit of evangelization and conversion, we are “slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by men and hating one another,” under the sway of “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.”

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