2023-06-24 16:44:00
June 24, 2023 / 9:44 a.m.
Receiving this morning the participants of the general chapter of the Servants of the Paraclete, Pope Francis affirmed that the one who cures priests of infidelity is the Holy Spirit.
In the audience held in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, the Holy Father stressed that “the spiritual life of a priest grows ‘not when the forms are kept and the patches are sewn, but when the initiative is left to the Spirit.’ Leave the initiative to the Spirit: it is He who brings about conversion and harmony in the life of a priest”.
“Duplicities must not be tolerated, but brought to light, in the light of the Spirit. Only He heals us from infidelity. Only Him, no other methods. What heals us from infidelity is the Holy Spirit,” he added.
The Servants of the Paraclete are a congregation founded in 1947 in the United States. Its founder is Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald. Originally they treated priests with addictions, then those who had problems with the experience of celibacy, until they began to help priests who perpetrated sexual abuse.
The Holy Father highlighted the “silent and hidden” work carried out by its members; and he explained that “at the present time, this also means sharing the particular path of purification that the Church is living due to the tragedies of abuse.”
Recalling a meditation of his with the clergy of Rome in March 2019, Pope Francis noted: “Sin disfigures us, and we painfully make the humiliating experience of it when we ourselves or one of our brother priests or bishops fall into the bottomless abyss. vice, corruption or, worse still, crime that destroys the lives of others”.
Faced with this reality, the Pontiff continued, “being ‘servants of the Paraclete’ requires dedicating one’s life to accompany some brother priests and consecrated persons, offering each one a path of asceticism, conversion, and spiritual and vocational renewal.”
“In the spirit and style of the Good Samaritan, they stand next to these brothers, sharing their life and daily prayer with them. Above all, they place them in a community, a praying community, which helps them rediscover the harmony of life that a vocational crisis always compromises”.
Pope Francis also encouraged those present to “deepen in the spirituality of reparation, starting from the need for purification, at the service of the holiness of the pastors of the People of God.”
“Their charism particularly underlines the ascetic commitment and prayer, with a contemplative disposition, which they rightly feel the duty to resume fully,” he continued.
“Together with the priests you accompany, you are called to rediscover the primacy of the spiritual life, aware that priestly maturity is realized when the Holy Spirit becomes the protagonist in the life of ordained ministers”, the Pontiff stressed. .
In conclusion, the Holy Father prayed that “the Spirit help you look at each one with the eyes of Jesus, with his love, with his tenderness.”
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Walter Sánchez Silva is a senior writer at ACI Prensa, with more than 15 years covering Church events in Europe, America and Asia.
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