The Pope stressed that priests share the same frailties, limitations and mistakes» as everyone else and warned seminaries that their mission is not to «form supermen» in an address to the participants of the Course for Rectors and Formators of Latin American Seminaries, organized by the Dicastery for the Clergy and coming from almost all the countries of the continent and the Caribbean.
Francis emphasized that these priests thus share the «same human and spiritual needs» as the rest of men and women and that we should not pretend to form them to «know and control everything and be self-sufficient, but on the contrary, it is to form men who with humility follow the process chosen by the Son of God, which is the way of the incarnation».
«Dear priest formators, it is necessary to leave inertia and protagonism and begin to dream together, not longing for the past, not alone, but united and open to what the Lord desires today as formation for the next generations of priests inspired by the current orientations of the Church,» he added.
He also stressed that a healthy human maturation consistent with the consolidation of one’s vocation and mission includes «the normal overcoming of difficulties and periods of crisis».
The Pope emphasized that one of the most important challenges facing houses of priestly formation today is to be true Christian communities, which implies not only a «coherent formative project, but also an adequate number of seminarians and formators to ensure a truly communitarian experience in all the dimensions of one’s vocation».
For the Pontiff, the human dimension of priestly formation «is not merely a school of virtues, of the growth of one’s own personality or of personal development» but passes principally through «an integral maturation of the person empowered by the grace of God which, while assuming the biological, psychological and social conditioning of each one, is capable of transforming and elevating them, especially when the person and the communities strive to collaborate with it in a transparent and truthful way».
On the other hand, Francis asked priests not to be «the center» of the Mass and urged them to flee from the «temptation of worldly protagonism.» «Let us flee from the temptation of worldly protagonism, which often deceives us by disguising itself as noble causes,» exclaimed the Pope at the end of the audience he granted in the Vatican to the community of the Pontifical Nepomucene College.
In the same way, he warned them that priests are not «first actors» but that it is «Jesus Christ who is the bridge, and it is He who is the pontiff».
The Pontiff thus stressed that God does not want «protagonists» who are sometimes «protagonists of sad and mediocre stories». In the same way, he pointed out that the worst thing that can happen to a consecrated man or woman is «spiritual worldliness».
