Pope reflects on bishops’ crucial place in ‘our holy Mother, the hierarchical Church’
November 05, 2014
Continuing his series of Wednesday general audiences on the Church, Pope Francis spoke on November 5 about the essential place of bishops in “our holy Mother, the hierarchical Church.”
“In the bishop, assisted by priests and deacons, it is Christ himself who is present and who continues to take care of his Church, ensuring his protection and guidance,” he said. “In the presence and ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, we can recognize the true face of the Church: she is our Holy Mother the Hierarchical Church.”
“The Church’s motherhood is particularly expressed in particular in the person of the bishop and in his ministry,” he continued. “In fact, as Jesus chose the Apostles and sent them out to preach the Gospel and shepherd his flock, so the bishops, their successors, are placed at the head of the Christian community, as guarantor of their faith and as a living sign of the presence of the Lord among them.”
The Pope emphasized that the episcopate is a service accepted out of obedience, not the culmination of a career:
There should not be room in the Church for a worldly mentality. A worldly mentality speaks of a man who has an ‘ecclesiastical career and has become a bishop.’ There should be no place for such a mentality in the Church … It is sad when we see a man who seeks this office and does all he can to get it and when he gets it does not serve, instead goes around like a peacock and lives only for his vanity.
Pope Francis noted that “when Jesus chose and called the apostles, he thought of them not as separate one from another, each on their own, but together, that they might be with Him, united as one family. The bishops too are a single college, gathered around the Pope, who is the guardian and guarantor of this profound communion that was so dear to Jesus and His apostles themselves.”
The Pope concluded by calling upon the faithful, beginning with the clergy, to be united with, and pray for, their bishops.
“There is no healthy Church if the faithful priests, deacons are not united around their bishop,” he said. “This Church not united around their bishop is a sick Church.”
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