14.07.28 - Pope meets 200 Pentecostals and renews friendship

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- His voice breaking with emotion, Giovanni Traettino, a Pentecostal pastor in southern Italy and longtime friend of Pope Francis, welcomed the pope, "my beloved brother," to his partially built church in Caserta.

Pope Francis said he knows some people were shocked that he would make a special trip outside of Rome to visit a group of Pentecostals, "but I went to visit my friends."

Traettino told the pope his visit was "unthinkable until recently," even though, he said, "even among evangelicals there is great affection for you. Many of us pray for you, every day. Many of us, in fact, believe your election as bishop of Rome was the work of the Holy Spirit."

Pope Francis told the Pentecostals that "the Holy Spirit is the source of diversity in the church. This diversity is very rich and beautiful. But then the same Holy Spirit creates unity. And in this way the church is one in diversity. To use a beautiful Gospel phrase that I love very much, reconciled diversity" is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

In addition to the visit, the pope fulfilled one specific request of the Italian evangelical community by recognizing the complicity of some Catholics in the fascist-era persecution of Italian Pentecostals and evangelicals.

"Among those who persecuted and denounced the Pentecostals, almost as if they were crazies who would ruin the race, there were some Catholics. As the pastor of the Catholics, I ask forgiveness for those Catholic brothers and sisters who did not understand and were tempted by the devil," Italian news agencies quoted the pope as saying.

The Vatican had described the visit as "strictly private" and, except for Vatican media, reporters were kept on the roof of a nearby apartment building. In the new worship space of the Pentecostal Church of Reconciliation, still under construction, Pope Francis met with about 200 people, including members of Traettino's congregation, other Italian evangelicals and representatives of Pentecostal ministries in Argentina and the United States, the Vatican said.

The pope and Traettino first met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the late 1990s when Traettino was establishing ties between charismatic Catholics and Pentecostal Protestants. The then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio and Traettino also appeared together at a large ecumenical charismatic gathering in Buenos Aires in 2006. Traettino was present June 1 in Rome's Olympic Stadium when Pope Francis spoke to an international gathering of Catholic charismatics....

..."Every man, every woman has something to give us," the pope said. "Every man, every woman has his or her own story and situation, and we must listen. Then, the prudence of the Holy Spirit will tell us what to say."

"Never be afraid to dialogue with anyone," Pope Francis told the Caserta priests. Dialogue is not being defensive about one's faith, although it can mean explaining what one believes. And it is not pressuring another to join one's faith.

Pope Benedict XVI was right when he said, "The church grows not through proselytism, but through attraction," Pope Francis said. And attraction is "human empathy guided by the Holy Spirit."

Msgr. Juan Usma Gomez, who handles the Catholic Church's official relations with evangelicals and Pentecostals, told Vatican Radio July 22 that Pope Francis teaches that "to work for Christian unity you need brotherhood," which is why he continues to nurture the friendships he established in Argentina. The iPhone video message the pope made in January with another Pentecostal friend, Bishop Tony Palmer, who died in a motorcycle accident July 20, "opened a door because it reached a really significant number of people," Msgr. Usma said. "It's an adventure that Pope Francis is asking us to establish. ... He's way ahead of us and we're trying to follow this pattern."

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Meeting 200 Pentecostals, pope renews friendship, talks unity

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