Vatican City, 21 December, 2019 / 12:02 pm (ACI Africa).
To carry out the continuing reform of the Church requires a willingness to change and a commitment to personal conversion, Pope Francis said Saturday, during his annual Christmas greeting to the bishops and cardinals of the Roman Curia.
Francis quoted St. John Henry Newman, who said, “here on earth to live is to change, and perfection is the result of many transformations.”
“For Newman, change was conversion, that is, an inner transformation,” the pope said Dec. 21. “Christian life is actually a journey, a pilgrimage.”
The history of God’s people, the history of the Church, he continued, “has always been marked by departures, shifts, changes. The path, of course, is not purely geographical, but above all symbolic: it is an invitation to discover the movement of the heart which, paradoxically, needs to depart in order to remain, to change in order to be faithful.”
Pope Francis spoke to the cardinals and supervisors of the departments in the Roman Curia inside the Vatican’s Clementine Hall. In the annual Christmas greeting the pope gives his perspective on the implementation of curial reform thus far and his vision for the coming year.