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ROME -- ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV kicked disconnected a weeklong solemnisation of Catholic clergy Tuesday by encouraging seminarians to beryllium joyful and honest, offering an uplifting connection aft Pope Francis often castigated priests and decried what helium called the misdeed of "clericalism.”
History's archetypal American pope presided implicit a rollicking brushwood with thousands of young men who were successful Rome for a peculiar Jubilee week celebrating seminarians, priests and bishops.
Tuesday’s brushwood turned St. Peter’s Basilica into thing resembling a performance venue, with seminarians waving their nationalist flags, interrupting Leo often with applause and shouts of “Papa Leone” and straining against barricades to buss his ringing arsenic helium passed.
In his remarks, Leo thanked the seminarians for agreeing to give their lives to the religion and said that with their vigor “you substance the occurrence of anticipation successful the beingness of the church.” He urged them to beryllium brave, joyful, truthful and not fell down masks oregon unrecorded hypocritical lives.
"You besides person to larn to springiness a sanction and dependable to sadness, fear, anxiousness and indignation, bringing everything earlier God,” the Augustinian pope told them. “Crises, limitations, fragilities aren’t to beryllium hidden, but are alternatively occasions for grace.”
Francis besides often met with seminarians, priests and bishops. But helium often had a connection of pugnacious love, railing against what helium called clericalism, oregon the inclination to enactment priests and clergy connected a pedestal. For Francis, clericalism was the basal of galore of the church’s problems, particularly the clergy enactment maltreatment and cover-up scandal, fixed however helium said it tin lend to abuses of powerfulness and authority.
While offering a much affirmative message, Leo cited galore of Francis’ concerns successful urging seminarians to travel the mediocre and lamenting today's “throwaway culture.” The seminarians interrupted him with applause erstwhile helium cited Francis by name.
The connection of encouragement whitethorn besides person been aimed astatine addressing the Catholic Church’s chronic hemorrhaging of the fig of clergy.
According to the latest Vatican statistics, the fig of seminarians worldwide continued to driblet adjacent arsenic the Catholic colonisation grew. There were 108,481 seminarians astatine the extremity of 2022, compared to 109,895 the erstwhile year. Only Africa and Oceania registered increases and the religion registered steep declines successful the traditionally Catholic Americas and Europe, and a much humble diminution successful Asia.
Over the coming days, Leo is expected to clasp akin encounters with priests and bishops earlier presiding implicit a Jubilee Mass this weekend. This week marks thing of the halfway people of the Vatican’s 2025 Holy Year, a solemnisation of Catholicism held erstwhile each quarter-century that has brought millions of pilgrims to Rome.
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