VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio
In this week’s editorial, Fr. Federico Lombardi, sj, speaks of the external challenges and pressures put on the Church since the resignation of Pope Benedict and leading up to the upcoming conclave. Fr. Lombardi is the director of the Press Office of the Holy See. Read Vatican Radio’s English translation below.
The journey of the Church in these last weeks of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate and up until the election of the new Pope — passing through the sede vacante and the conclave — is very demanding, given the newness of the situation. We do not — and we rejoice — have to carry the pain of the death of a much-loved Pope, but we have not been spared another test: that of the multiplication of the pressures and considerations that are foreign to the spirit with which the Church would like to live this period of waiting and preparation.
There is no lack, in fact, of those who seek to profit from the moment of surprise and disorientation of the spiritually naive to sow confusion and to discredit the Church and its governance, making recourse to old tools, such as gossip, misinformation and sometimes slander, or exercising unacceptable pressures to condition the exercise of the voting duty on the part of one or another member of the College of Cardinals, who they consider to be objectionable for one reason or another.
In the majority of cases, those who present themselves as judges, making heavy moral judgments, do not, in truth, have any authority to do so. Those who consider money, sex and power before all else and are used to reading diverse realities from these perspectives, are unable to see anything else, even in the Church, because they are unable to gaze toward the heights or descend to the depths in order to grasp the spiritual dimensions and reasons of existence. This results in a description of the Church and of many of its members that is profoundly unjust.
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