IMCS Pax Romana at the Annual Meeting of Ecclesial Movements held by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.

On the 22nd of June 2023 IMCS Pax Romana was represented at the Annual Meeting of Ecclesial Movements held by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life by Francesco Fonte, a member of FUCI and European Coordinating Team Member. It has been a fruitful occasion for reasoning on the renovated role of ecclesial movements in the Church, in the vein of apostolicity. This has been the core theme of the conferences, with speeches delivered by Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, the prefect of the Dicastery, and theologians who are part of the movements.

The reflection of the day was based on a written version of the speech delivered by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1998 at the World Congress of Ecclesial Movements.

The addresses analyzed Ratzinger’s view about ecclesial movements, rooting its approach to the relationship between charisms, the institutional church and related to that the specific positioning of the movements in apostolic communion with the Pope. Furthermore, it was recalled Pope Francis’ invitation to avoid certain tendencies referred to Ecclesial Movements’ today, namely in the contrast of the rising auto referentiality of several realities and in the effects of “personalism” in imposing a predominant personality of view of the movement, especially that of the founder. 

Several points which were raised could be useful for the associative discernment of social action movements’ like IMCS Pax Romana. This charism of IMCS is an expression of the plurality of ways in which the laity interpret their positioning in the Church, namely by taking up social action and addressing the need of the oppressed and marginalized people as well as, as repeatedly addressed during the meeting, in the diffusion of Catholic Social Teaching in operative terms.

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