To answer God’s call to holiness, Christians must care for the poor, the sick and the immigrant just as they care for preventing abortion, Pope Francis wrote in his latest major guidance to the Catholic Church, published on Monday.
The document, titled “Gaudate et Exsultate” (Latin for “Rejoice and Be Glad”), is Francis’ third major publication in his five-year papacy, following works on the environment and the family that each made waves in the church. This apostolic exhortation takes up a broader theme, holiness, but some church scholars quickly read the new work as an implied response to the pope’s conservative critics.
Francis writes of what it means to be holy in the modern world, with many specific examples: viewing a person sleeping on the street not as an obstacle or a political problem but as a human being; refraining from gossip in the grocery store and impatience with our children; reading the Bible even in a time of constant online distractions; avoiding being “caught up in networks of verbal violence through the internet.”
Francis’ vision of holiness is expansive, touching on the actions of everyday people in situations from family life to politics. “It goes back to Genesis, which says all of us, all of creation, all men and women are made in the image and likeness of God. What Pope Francis is trying to say is: Do we really believe that?” said the Rev. William Graf, chair of religious studies at St. John Fisher College in New York. “Do we see God present in the immigrant? Do we see God present in the gay person?”
