VATICAN - Benedict XVI addresses first group of Brazilian Bishops on Ad Limina visit: “When our contemporaries come to us, they want to see something that they do not see elsewhere, namely, joy and the hope that springs from the fact that we are with the Risen Lord.”

Castel Gandolfo (Agenzia Fides) - “As Successor of Peter and universal Pastor, I can assure you that my heart feels day by day your apostolic concerns and efforts, not ceasing to recall before God the challenges you face in the growth of your diocesan communities.” These are the words with which the Holy Father Benedict XVI addressed the first group of Brazilian Bishops (from Regions West 1 and West 2), whom received in an audience on September 7, on the occasion of their Ad Limina Apostolorum visit, in the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo. “Your group initiates a long pilgrimage of the members of this episcopal conference on their 'ad limina apostolorum' visit, which will give me the occasion to know better the reality of the respective diocesan communities. These will be days of fraternal sharing to reflect together on the issues that concern you.”
After recalling his visit to Brazil, in May 2007, “when I had the possibility to embrace with a glance the whole episcopate of this great nation during the meeting in the Catedral da Se in São Paulo,” Benedict XVI mentioned some of the problems and challenges they are facing, the great distances that the Bishops, along with the priests and other missionaries, must travel in order to offer pastoral service to the faithful, “many of them affected by the problems proper to a relatively recent urbanization, in which the state does not always succeed in being an instrument for the promotion of justice and the common good.” He then told them: “Do not be discouraged! Remember that the proclamation of the Gospel and adherence to Christian values, as I stated recently in the encyclical 'Caritas in Veritate,' 'is not merely useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral human development' (no. 4).”
In light of the scarcity of “workers in the Lord's harvest,” which in Brazil continue to be few for a harvest that is great, the Holy Father paused to reflect on, in this Year for Priests, the important task of the Bishops in fostering [the vocation] of new pastors. “Although God is the only one able to awaken in the human heart a call to the pastoral service of his people, all members of the Church should question if they see and feel the profound urgency of this mission and have a real commitment to it...There are many who seem to want to live the whole of life in a minute, others who wander in tedium and inertia, or abandon themselves to violence of all sorts. Deep down, these are no more than desperate lives that look for hope, as demonstrated by an extended, though at times confused, need of spirituality, a renewed search for points of reference to take up again the journey of life.”
The Holy Father then recalled that “in the decades following the Second Vatican Council, some interpreted the openness not as a demand flowing from the missionary ardor of the Heart of Christ, but as a step toward secularization, perceiving there certain strong Christian values, such as equality, liberty, solidarity. They showed themselves ready to make concessions and discover areas of cooperation. We witnessed the interventions of some ecclesiastical officials in ethical debates, which responded to the expectations of public opinion, but which failed to speak of certain essential truths of the faith, such as sin, grace, theological life and the last things. Without realizing it, many ecclesial communities fell into self-secularization. Hoping to charm those who were not joining, they saw many of their members leave, cheated and disillusioned. When our contemporaries come to us, they want to see something that they do not see elsewhere, namely, joy and the hope that springs from the fact that we are with the Risen Lord. At present there is a new generation born in this secularized ecclesial environment who, instead of looking for openness and consensus, see how the gap between society and the positions of the magisterium of the Church, especially in the ethical field, is ever greater. In this desert lacking God, the new generation feels a great thirst for transcendence.”
The young men of this new generation who knock on the door of seminaries need to find “formators who are true men of God, priests totally dedicated to formation, who give witness of the gift of themselves to the Church, through celibacy and an austere life, according to the model of Christ the Good Shepherd.” The Pope then mentioned that “it is the bishop's task to establish the essential criteria for the formation of seminarians and priests in fidelity to the universal norms of the Church,” and he encouraged “all bishops, their priests and seminarians, to imitate in their lives the charity of Christ, Priest and Good Shepherd, as the holy Cure d'Ars did.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 8/9/2009)