CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS): Stressing the importance of Church unity, Pope John Paul II urged bishops to take seriously and implement Vatican and papal documents.
Speaking to a group of Brazilian bishops on Spetember 14, he rejected occasionally voiced objections that he and Vatican offices were out of touch with local realities or that the steady flow of documents was too much for busy pastors to read.
Unity among bishops and with Rome is especially important today because of pastoral challenges that go beyond diocesan borders – caring for the poor, protecting the environment, and facing a spreading secularism and consumerism, the Pope said.
The distinctive mark of your mission as pastors of the people entrusted to you is to be, above all, promoters and models of communion,’ he said.
‘As teachers of sound doctrine, called to indicate the sure path to the Father, and as servants of the light that is Christ … do not cease to offer – united, as successors of the apostles – the teaching of Church magisterium,’ he said.
