12 years after Pope Francis’s choice, a cardinal urges Chile to host his teaching

Pope Francis turns 12 occupying the chair of Pedro, and Cardinal Fernando Chomali, Archbishop of Santiago, took the occasion as an opportunity to highlight the teachings of his pontificate for the current reality of Chile.

With the purpose of disseminating “his rich teaching” and before the certainty that “the Pope should be more listened to and read”, the purple considered that “his teachings can help us out of the serious spiritual crisis that we are living and that derives in a deep social and political crisis.”

Pope’s teachings

Then, he listed several issues that are present in the teaching of the Holy Father and that are valuable for Chilean news:

• “It tells us about sharing the goods we have with the most needy amid so much greed and a messy taste for the superfluous.”

• “It tells us about being humble amid so much arrogance and pride.”

• “It tells us to serve others in the midst of so many voices that rise in search of spaces of power.”

• “The Pope invites us to have more spiritual depth and ability to discern in the midst of so much worldness, even among believers.”

• “The Pope wants to lead us to Jesus being the center of our lives and the Gospel our navigation letter in personal, family, social and economic life.”

The Pope’s teaching as a guide for current debates

Mention of the debates in force in Chile, such as the tax reform or the need for a new pension system, and with emphasis on the “unprecedented” security crisis that the country is going through, Cardinal Chomali took the Pope’s message as an invitation to “expand the look” to “look with the eyes of the poorest”.

In this regard, he considered that “in Chile we need to look beyond our own borders and understand ourselves as a community”, and said that “the whole is more than the parties”, as the Pope usually says. “Maybe that helps to accept us as a people, as a community, as a group of citizens who aspire to the common good more than personal good.”

“Thinking about the world that we will leave to future generations is a question that Francisco asked from the first moment he assumed as a pontiff. That question must be answered each of us with courage, in the light of the teachings of the successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ, ”he encouraged.

He also mentioned the “great yearning” of the Pope: the universal fraternity; to his “great project”: the care of the common house; Already his “great dream”: a poor church for the poor, “moving from an ecclesiastical and vertical culture to an ecclesial and horizontal culture where to walk together is the norm.”

“The Pope urges us to pray incessantly, as the first communities and share what we have with the most needy. Making the Gospel in daily living, is the path drawn by the Pope for the Church, without fuss, but with simplicity, with heart and with great humility, ”he encouraged.

The invitation, said the archbishop, is that “we also do it, critically examining our gestures, our words and our actions.”

“The Pope calls each of us to assume the commitment to build a more just and better society, no longer ‘balcony’, that is, looking out to the balcony just to look, criticize and do nothing,” he warned.

“For this there is only one way: to know, believe, follow and imitate Jesus Christ. This will lead us to a clear and determined way of life, in which there is more joy in giving than to receive, to work for a better society and to adopt an austere lifestyle, according to the logic of wanting to be more and have no more, ”he concluded, fraternally inviting Chileans to continue on this path.