POPE Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) is something new and impressive and needs to be read by all Catholics, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge said.
Australia’s bishops are also eager to see Australian Catholics read and then embrace the apostolic exhortation.
In welcoming Pope Francis’ publication, the Australian bishops thanked Pope Francis for the gift he had given the Church.
In a statement they said the Pope “gathers up the work of the Synod on the New Evangelisation, and the voice of the universal Church is heard in what he writes”.
“But it is also the voice of Francis that we hear unmistakeably,” they said.
“The bishops not only recommend this very readable document to all people, but will do all we can to ensure that its teaching is widely known.”
Archbishop Coleridge, along with his fellow Australian bishops, saw the text as a call for decisions and action.
He said the first statement by a new pope was always important in setting a platform for his ministry.
“That is certainly true of this document,” he said.
Archbishop Coleridge said the exhortation came as “a gift from God at the end of the Year of Grace and Faith”.
“We asked for grace, and we have got it in many ways – prime among them the gift of Pope Francis and now this letter he has written,” he said.
Archbishop Coleridge said The Joy of the Gospel stood out from historical papal documents.
“I have read many papal documents through the years; I even helped write a few of them,” he said.
“But in The Joy of the Gospel there is something new, something I have never struck before in papal documents, even the more memorable of them.”
Archbishop Coleridge wants to see the text widely distributed.
“The bishops are already asking how we can make ‘The Joy of the Gospel’ more widely known among Catholics and others; and we all need to be asking the same question, not just leaving it to the Pope and the bishops,” he said.
“We need adaptations and summaries; we need audio versions; we need selected abstracts published in our Catholic media; we need material based on it that is suitable for use in schools; we need versions suitable for group study and reflection.”
Archbishop Coleridge has called for parishioners throughout the archdiocese to read and then re-read the document.
“The Pope speaks often in the letter of the Holy Spirit, and we need to ask the Holy Spirit to open our minds and hearts to the deeper meanings of what the Pope has written,” he said.
Robin Williams
