Pope Encourages Young Churches, “Continent of Hope”

Pope Benedict XVI addressed two very important groups last week, encouraging new and vibrant parts of the Church to be steadfast in the Faith while also sharing it joyfully.

In a September 5 message to the Pan-African Congress of Catholic Laity, he called on lay Catholics there to evangelize their “continent of hope.”

“The love for life and for the family, a sense of joy and sharing, the enthusiasm of living the faith are all values that I have seen during my travels in Africa and that are still etched in my heart,” he said. And joy, which rejects the dark relativism crippling other parts of the world, should lead the African lay faithful to be “’ambassadors’ of the Good News.”

Later in the week, Pope Benedict passed on a similar message to 100 recently consecrated mission-territory Bishops.

“The Church is born of the mission and grows with the mission,” he said, and “the faith is a gift to be welcomed into our hearts and lives, one for which we must always thank the Lord.”

But we aren’t supposed to let that faith just sit there in our hearts, the pontiff said. The “faith is donated in order to be shared; it is a talent given that it may bear fruit, a light that must not remain hidden.”

As we prepare for the Synod for the New Evangelization, let us remember our brothers and sisters in Africa and in mission territories throughout the world. Let us pray that they find ways to evangelize or re-evangelize their cultures as we discover ways to re-evangelize ours.