Today the third world congress of the New Ecclesial Movements and Communities, organized by the Pontifical Council for the Laity, began in Rome. The world congress is a reply to the call made by Pope Francis for a missionary conversion, through the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.
More than 300 members of lay associations coming from more than 100 groups and forty nations are working together on the theme "The joy of the gospel: a missionary joy (EG 21). This is the third encounter if this type, after the congress welcomed by John Paul JI in 1998 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2006.
The President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, introduced the first session recalling the rich magistetium of recent pontiffs on what John Paul II had called "the new springtime if lay associations". Cardinal Rylko pointed out that the sudden and unexpected flourishing of so many new ecclesial realities was understood by Pontifical magistetium as the Holy Spirit's timely reply to the challenges facing the Church in the contemporary world. John Paul II followed and guided the rapid growth in the new communities and Ecclesial giving them clear and insightful words.
The Cardinal said that at Pentecost 1998 "Pope John Paul decided to give a new impulsion to the progress of these new realities, and their charisms, the time of ecclesial maturity.
He continued his review of Magisterium underlining that for Benedict XVI, " the diversity and unity of the charisma and ministriesis inseparable within the life for the Church. The Holy Spirit wants this diversity of movements in the service of the One Body: the Church."
Cardinal Rylko recalled how Pope Francis knows the movements very well and insists that these new charisma "are not a closed patrimony given to a group so that they can keep I for themselves, but are a gift of the Spirit for the Body that is the Church, attracting towards Christ who is the centre if things, and from where the power to evangelize flows out."
Cardinal Rylko then encouraged the leaders of the movements and communities present to reply to the missionary all contained in Evangelii Gaudium.
Work continued with Prof. Fabrice Hadjadj , proposing a reading of the signs of the times as a basis for later discussion. "Our world is less and less incarnate. We live in an era 'in vitro veritas' be it the glass of a tv screw it the glass if a test tube baby. Fathers have been replaced by experts, and this happens also when bishops withdraw from bring father figures and content themselves with being hierarchical superiors. Mothers are progressively replaced by electronic systems."
Accirding to Hadjadj, “Christ warns us that he who rejects grace ends up losing nature and he who ignores the Creator ends up forgetting the creature, while he who rejects the invisible ends up being able to see only what he wants to see. "
