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Reflecting the Mind of the
Vatican since 1850
The Figure of the Bishop According to Pope Francis
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In his opening address to the 68th General Assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference in May 2015, Pope Francis asked the bishops not to be “pilots” but real “pastors.”

On many occasions the pontiff has appealed to bishops to be “bishops who are pastors, not princes,” making references to images he had already used when he governed his previous diocese.

In 2006, while giving a retreat for the bishops of Spain, in his introductory meditation on the Magnificat, he spoke of “feeling ourselves to be collaborators, not owners, humble servants like Our Lady, not princes.” Concluding the retreat, he said – in his meditation on the phrase “the Lord reforms us” – that, “the people desire a pastor, not a refined man who loses himself in the finer things which are in vogue.”

This pastoral choice does not belong exclusively to bishops, but involves every “missionary disciple,” each in his own state and condition. In the apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (EG), the pope states: “Clearly Jesus does not want us to be grandees who look down upon others, but men and women of the people. This is not an idea of the pope, or one pastoral option among others; they are injunctions contained in the word of God which are so clear, direct and convincing that they need no interpretations which might diminish their power to challenge us. Let us live them sine glossa, without commentaries.”
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