Pope wants an ‘evangelical church’ in the United States, papal nuncio says

CNA • Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the papal nuncio to the United States, reminded the U.S. bishops at one of their gatherings recently of Pope Francis’ “closeness,” while giving them encouragement in a post-Roe world and exhorting them to a life of evangelization.

Citing an address of Pope Francis, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Cardinal Pierre said: “When the Church does not go out of herself to evangelize, she becomes self-referential, and then she gets sick.”

Cardinal Pierre cited a passage from Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium and noted that “Pope Francis encouraged us to be a missionary Church that goes forth to announce the joyful message, more deeply committed to her mission than to maintenance of structures that may no longer adequately serve the mission.”

Cardinal Pierre said that the Holy Father desires the image of “a poor Church for the poor” and an “evangelical Church.”

Cardinal Pierre continued his speech with the theme of evangelization, citing a 2013 interview that Pope Francis gave in which the Holy Father said: “Evangelizing, in fact, is the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists to evangelize.”

Cardinal Pierre said that the synodal process should be “understood in a missionary key.”

Cardinal Pierre asked the bishops: “Does the Church in the United States understand herself in this way, especially as we live through a time of accelerated change?”

A way to answer this question is by examining the evangelical character of local parishes, he said.

“Do we go forth and take the initiative? Do we get involved? Do we accompany others, showing patience? What are the fruits that we are seeing from our evangelizing efforts? Finally, do our local churches demonstrate the joy, which flows from the Eucharist?” he said.

Cardinal Pierre said that the U.S. bishops’ Eucharistic Revival is an opportunity for the Church to celebrate the “nuptial joy of a community that is loved by the Lord, of a community that evangelizes and that is herself evangelized.”

He added: “Let the Eucharistic Revival be lived in this light — as an evangelizing moment!”

Cardinal Pierre noted Pope Francis’ warning that there are “barriers” that limit the experience of joy and that limit evangelization. One barrier is “our own internal structures which are always in need of pastoral and missionary conversion for evangelization, rather than for the Church’s self-preservation,” he said.