Papal message links pursuit of holiness, Catholic social teaching, evangelization
September 19, 2014
Pope Francis has linked personal conversion, Catholic social teaching, and evangelization in a brief message to participants in a Madrid conference.
“The Holy Father encourages you to deepen your own pursuit of holiness by a firm commitment to personal prayer and conversion,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, said in a message to participants in Catholic Social Days for Europe. “Thus you will offer to the various sectors of society a more coherent and joyful witness which will awaken consciences to the reality that temporal goods and the ordering of society must be at the service of the human person and their ultimate fulfillment in God.”
The Pope “prays especially that this event will highlight the ways in which faith compels us to transmit the Church’s love for the poor, for those suffering persecution, for all who are forced to flee their homes and for those who come to Europe in search of refuge,” Cardinal Parolin continued. “A Church that gives greater attention to the material needs of those who suffer will also learn how to provide a more convincing proclamation of truth and salvation to those who hunger and thirst for eternal life and to those who ‘call you to account for the hope that is in you’” (1 Pet 3:15).
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