Rome Newsroom, Nov 7, 2022 / 08:03 am
Pope Francis on Monday asked religious not to succumb to pessimism over a lack of vocations and to pray with him to “deliver us from the presumption of self-sufficiency and the spirit of worldly criticism.”
Addressing representatives of the Claretianum Institute of the Theology of the Consecrated Life on the occasion of its 50th anniversary at the Vatican on Nov. 7, the pontiff asked the religious to pray with him to God: “You who feed us with tenderness, deliver us from self-referentiality, from the diabolical deception of polarizations, from ‘isms.’”
Pope Francis warned that consecrated life today should not be discouraged by a “lack of vocations or by aging.”
“Those who allow themselves to be caught up in pessimism set aside their faith,” he continued.