Pope: no to self-referentiality, both the Church and the poor – First Floor

(ANSA) – ROME, JUN 26 – “We need a charity dedicated to the integral development of the person: a spiritual, material, intellectual charity. It is the integral style that you have experienced in great calamities”, “but this must not arise only in occasion of calamities: we need that Caritas and Christian communities are always in search to serve the whole person “,” the way of the Gospel shows us that Jesus is present in every poor person “. Pope Francis said this when he met the members and volunteers of Caritas in the fiftieth anniversary of the Foundation. “It does us good to remember it – Francis stressed – to free ourselves from the ever-recurring temptation of ecclesiastical self-reference and to be a Church of tenderness and closeness, where the poor are blessed, where mission is at the center, where joy is born service”. (HANDLE).