2014-07-18 08:42:00

Card. de Aviz urges Australia’s religious to “Wake up the World”


(Vatican Radio) Australia’s Consecrated Religious are gathered in Melbourne for their National Assembly focusing on the theme “Living on the Fault Lines- Leading in a Climate of Change”. 

The Assembly of representatives from more than 180 congregations of Sisters, Brothers and Religious Priests living and working in all states and territories, was addressed by Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

In his lengthy address, the Cardinal focused on new ways of being religious in today’s world.  He said that while in some areas vocations to religious and consecrated life were dramatically diminishing – such as Australia – in others they were flourishing.  Here, he mentioned Asia, Africa and Latin America in particular.

The Cardinal added : “It is true, however, that even in the midst of these signs of vitality of the consecrated life there is a search for something deeper that goes beyond the experiences of consecration as we have known it hitherto. There is a waiting for something new, for something consonant with the current culture  and sensitive to the values most deeply felt by men and women of our day”.

Cardinal Aziz concluded “Concretely, the consecrated life today has before it a possible road for conferring on the world its deepest meaning: namely, that of building up these relations that embody  the DNA of our God-Love  –  amongst its members, between Institutes, each one with the others, with the other realities of the Church,  with every man and woman in the various fields of human life (political, economic, educational, health, the arts…). In this sense, we recall that  to make the credible proclamation of Christ possible today it is not  enough for us to possess a moral code, to have a received spiritual inheritance  or an ideology.  What is necessary is the communitarian testimony of the spirituality of communion that Pope Saint John Paul II prophesied would be the strength of the Church in the new millennium (cf. NMI 43-45). I think that we, as consecrated men and women today, can respond to the challenges that the present time offers us and realize the program Pope Francis has traced for us: “Wake up the world!”

 The full text of Cardinal João Braz de Aviz’s address is available clicking here.








All the contents on this site are copyrighted ©.