VATICAN - Study Seminar for newly appointed Bishops - Cardinal Nicora illustrates duties and risks of service in administration “to guarantee material means so that the mission Jesus entrusted to his Church may continue”

Vatican City (Fides Service) - “Worship, pastoral, charity, ecclesiastic personnel: are the four constitutive ends of the possession and use of ecclesial resources as such. The Church may possess resources only for these reasons. She may not legitimately possess resources for any other ends which do not stem from these four fundamental fields”. Cardinal Attilio Nicora, President of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See said this when he addressed participants at a study Seminar organised by the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples for newly appointed bishops in mission territories. Illustrating “The necessities and risks of the diocesan Bishop’s service of administration”, Cardinal Nicora said that ecclesiastical administration consists first of all “guaranteeing concretely, at a certain time and in certain historical and social conditions that the resources which belong to the patrimony of Church bodies serve effectively and efficiently to pursue these four finalities”.
Ecclesiastical administration includes other duties: “preserve and improve resources under the profile of quality and if possible quantity”; promote “order, transparency, duties of justice with regard to the management of resources”, and also to ensure “transparent reports on the use of resources, particularly to those who offer the resources with the intention of supporting the Church’s mission”; “increase communion and solidarity” in the diocese, in parishes and foundations... and also in the broader picture of the needs of the whole Church; keep correct relations with the institutions of civil society.
Cardinal Nicora warned of risks for the administrator, first of all “to use his role to obtain power”, as a person on whom the destiny of others depends, at least in part. There is also a risk of adopting the “mentality of the world”, and to think that the ends justify the means, crafty cheating with state laws if it can be done without risk. “The State is not an enemy it is the home of the people- the Cardinal said -. Paying taxes is not a sin it is a duty because taxes are a necessary means of helping to guarantee services which render society more human and of which we and our works also benefit”. Another risk to be avoided “feeding pompous appearances and a personality cult”.
“The challenge - the Cardinal said - is to transform these motives of tension, needs and risks, into elements of spirituality, not suffering them as an unfair and wearing burden but making them become the specific and proper manner of living the gift received, make it serve as good stewards of the multiform grace of God”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 13/9/2004; Righe 32 - Parole 443)