To evangelise is to live the Gospel, then share it, Pope Francis says

23 Jun 2022

By Contributor

By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Pope Francis meets a cleric in a wheelchair
Pope Francis greets a cleric in a wheelchair during an audience with participants attending the general chapter of the Comboni Missionaries, at the Vatican on 18 June 2022. Photo: CNS/Vatican Media.

One cannot share the Gospel without living it first, Pope Francis said in separate meetings with members of the general chapters of the Pauline Fathers and Comboni Missionaries.

“The first thing a communicator communicates is himself, perhaps without meaning to, but it is himself,” Pope Francis told the Paulines, a religious order with a focus on communications and the media.

“A missionary is a disciple who is so united to his master and lord that his hands, his mind, and his heart are channels of Christ’s love,” Pope Francis told the Comboni Missionaries.

Pope Francis met members of the general chapters of the orders at the Vatican on 18 June.

Pope Francis leads an audience with participants attending the general chapter of the Comboni Missionaries, at the Vatican on 18 June 2022. Seated next to the pope is Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; standing is Father Tesfaye Tadesse, superior general of the Comboni Missionaries. Photo: CNS/Vatican Media.

“Great missionaries” like Blessed Daniele Comboni and St Frances Cabrini “lived their mission feeling animated and driven by the heart of Christ, that is, by the love of Christ,” Pope Francis told the Combonis. That drive pushed them “to go out and go beyond: not only beyond geographical limits and boundaries but first and foremost beyond their own personal limits.”

“The push of the Holy Spirit is what makes us come out of ourselves, out of our closures, out of our self-referentiality,” he said, and it “makes us go toward others, toward the peripheries, where the thirst for the Gospel is greatest.”

To be sent on mission, he said, is to be sent to bring God’s mercy, compassion, and tenderness to people, and that can be done only by being merciful, compassionate, and tender.

“Mercy, tenderness is a universal language, which knows no boundaries,” Pope Francis said. “But you carry this message not so much as individual missionaries, but as a community, and this implies you must care not only for your personal style but also the style of your communities,” cultivating honest communication and care for one another.

Pope Francis greets Father Valdir José De Castro, superior general of the Pauline Fathers, during an audience with participants in the order’s general chapter, at the Vatican on 18 June 2022. Photo: CNS/Vatican Media.

At his meeting with the Pauline Fathers, Pope Francis handed them the speech he had prepared and then proceeded to talk about the importance of honest, complete communication.

“You have the vocation to communicate cleanly, evangelically,” Pope Francis told them. “If we take today’s media, there is a lack of cleanliness, a lack of honesty, a lack of completeness.”

“Disinformation is the order of the day: one thing is said, but many others are hidden,” he said. “We must ensure that in our communication of faith, this does not happen, that communication comes precisely from vocation, from the Gospel – crisp, clear, witnessed with one’s life.”