Cardinal Tagle: Bishops in the Church are custodians and not “owners” of God’s flock

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, stressed that the bishops in the Catholic Church are custodians or administrators and not “owners” of the flock that belongs to God, within the framework of the course organized by the Vatican for the bishops who have received the episcopal consecration in the last year.

The course entitled “Open a door to hope. Calling the Episcopate in a jubilee context” takes place in the Pontifical College San Pedro, and there the cardinal reminded the participants that the Episcopal Ministry is a ministry of ‘administration’.

According to the Vatican agency FidesTagle stressed that the Church is “the flock of God.” It is “the people of God” redeemed by the blood of Christ and the bishops are only “the administrators, the custodians”, called to guide the flock according to the will of God.

Custodian bishops and non -owners

Being “limited, human and weak people as we are, there is always the temptation to acquire property” and “to treat the Church, even people, priests, religious, as objects of my property,” said Cardinal Filipino.

After pointing out that the bishops are also called to take care of the gifts that the Holy Spirit sheds in the community, the pro-prefect regretted “when a bishop who has the grace and blessing of being administrator of the people of God behaves as an owner, responsible only before himself.”

“How do we exercise our administration of the Church? From our relationship with the clergy, with the religious, with the religious. We hurt to hear the comments of some religious who claim to be treated in the dioceses almost as slaves and not as daughters of the Church. And sometimes their religious vote of poverty is used or evokes to deny them a worthy contribution to live, for their livelihood, for their justice.”

Fides states that Cardinal Tagle based his reflection on what the apostles Peter and Paul told the elders in their exhortations, and reminded the new bishops that “it is God who has full confidence in you, expressed through the Church, in particular through the Holy Father, who names and designates the bishops. But it is the Holy Spirit who names us.

Be vigilant and communion

After remembering that the bishops are successors of the apostles and that this succession is not “our merit”, nor does it depend on “our qualifications”, the purple encouraged to be vigilant with one’s life and that of the faithful, because – as St. Paul says in the events of the apostles – “you will come in the midst of you false teachers as raptures and you will not forgive the herd.”

In that sense, “shepherds must pray, purify their intentions to be able to guide our people well.”

The Catholic bishop, said the cardinal, must be a man of communion because the Holy Spirit “grants different gifts, different talents, different cultures, but it is the same spirit that unites everyone.”

The bishop is called to be “a person who feels comfortable with diversity, who is able to bring diversity to a unity animated by the spirit,” he said.