BY Ian Dunn | May 20 | 
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Divisions are the gravest scandal, Pope tells Italian bishops
Pope Francis said bishops must to be pastors who remember that the Church is the ‘community of the Risen One,’ that the Church is the ‘body of the Lord,’ and the Church must anticipate the ‘promise of the Kingdom.’
The Holy Father made the points in address to the Italian Episcopal Conference yesterday, a message that also appeared to outline his new priorities for the Universal Church.
As shepherds of the community of Christ, bishops are called to place God at the centre of their lives and cultivate their relationship with Jesus Christ through ‘silence and prayerful listening,’ Pope Francis said. Otherwise, bishops are tempted to ‘tepidity,’ to ‘looking for a quiet life’ and shunning sacrifice, and to presuming on one’s own strength and relying on ‘organisational strategies.’
As shepherds of the Church that is the Lord’s body, bishops are called to live in communion, and divisions, the Pope emphasised, are the gravest scandal.
‘Eucharistic spirituality,’ he continued, is the antidote to gossip, ambition, complaining, and a uniformity that would deny the gifts through which God makes the Church ‘young and beautiful.’ Bishops, he said, should welcome popular piety, serve as a leaven for unity, and ‘love with total dedication’ the people entrusted to them, focusing on ‘the harvest, more than on budgets.’
Pope Francis concluded by appealing to the bishops to live simply and close to the people and to minister to families, the unemployed, and refugees. The family, he said, is ‘heavily penalised by a culture that emphasises individual rights and transmits a logic of the provisional. Promote the life of the unborn as well as the elderly.’
He also spoke of the work of the Church itself in difficult global political and economic times, which he referred to as ‘an historic emergency, that appeals to the social responsibility of all.’
“As Church, let us not give in to catastrophism and resignation, instead supporting with every form of creative solidarity the efforts of those who, without work, feel deprived even of their dignity,” Pope Francis said.
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