Rome, 07 August, 2021 / 10:20 am (ACI Africa).
St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers, can teach Catholics how to overcome divisions, the head of the order said on the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death.
Fr. Gerard Francisco Parco Timoner III, the Master General of the Dominican Order, highlighted St. Dominic’s gift for overcoming discord as the order commemorated its founder’s death on Aug. 6, 1221.
“Today we see that the Church, the body of Christ, is wounded by division and discord, and we see that,” Timoner, who was elected as the 87th successor of St. Dominic in 2019, told Vatican News.
“It is very painful to read sometimes Catholics writing against the pope, writing against the Church, as though they are not Catholics. That is very painful. And if the Church is the body of Christ, then the body of Christ is wounded by division, by discord.”
He continued: “Dominic actually tried to do something about that, because the order he founded, he gifted it with a communitarian form of government. It is not democratic, but communitarian, where it is an inclusive form of government, where discernment and decisions involve the brothers -- with different levels of responsibility, according to offices, yes.”