To Leaders of the Base Communities (11 July 1980)

The text of this Message was made public on 11 July 1980, during the Holy Father's stay in Manaus.

Beloved brothers:

1. Your desire to be able to meet the Pope during his visit to Brazil coincided with the desire that I myself had to meet with you. But it has not been possible, with great regret for me, to get in touch with all the realities and experiences of the Church in Brazil. Regarding some I have had to limit myself to conversing with people linked to them. That has happened to me with you, members and leaders of basic ecclesial communities. Reading the five-year reports of the Brazilian bishops and my conversations with them during the current visit confirm something that I already knew from previous information: the enormous importance that the base ecclesial communities have in the pastoral care of the Church in Brazil. For this reason, not having had the opportunity to meet you, I would not want to leave you without a few words from me,

2. Above all, I am happy to be able to renew now the confidence that my long-awaited predecessor, Pope Paul VI, wanted to express in relation to the basic ecclesial communities. To them he dedicated a dense paragraph, rich in content, luminous in his concepts and highly significant in his magisterial Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi (No. 58). He collected in that text everything that had been discussed about those communities during the Synod of Bishops of 1974, in which Divine Providence wanted me to assume tasks of great responsibility. Already during the pastoral trip to Mexico , three months after the election for the supreme pontificate, I had the opportunity to declare that the basic ecclesial communities can be a valuable instrument of Christian formation and of the capillary penetration of the Gospel in society (cf. L'Osservatore Romano, Language Edition Spanish, February 11, 1979, page 16). And they will be so to the extent that they remain faithful to that fundamental identity so well described by Paul VI in the aforementioned paragraph of Evangelii nuntiandi .

3. Among the dimensions of the base ecclesial communities, I deem it appropriate to draw attention to the one that most deeply defines them and without which their identity would vanish: ecclesiality .

I underline this ecclesiality because it is already explicit in the designation that the base communities have received, especially in Latin America. be ecclesial it is its original brand and its way of existing and acting. They are organic communities to better be Church. And the base to which they refer is of a clearly ecclesial nature and not merely sociological or of another nature. I also underline this ecclesiality, because the danger of attenuating this dimension, if not of condemning it to disappear for the benefit of others, is neither unreal nor remote, but rather continues to be current. Especially insistent is the risk of intrusion of the political. This interference can occur in the very genesis and formation of the communities, when they are created not based on a vision of the Church, but with criteria and objectives of political ideology. Such interference, on the other hand, can also occur in the form of political instrumentalization of communities that were born with an ecclesial perspective.

An exquisite attention and a serious and courageous effort to maintain in all its purity the ecclesial dimension of these communities is an eminent service that is rendered, on the one hand, to the communities themselves and, on the other, to the Church. To the communities, because it preserves their ecclesial identity and guarantees their freedom, efficiency and their own survival. To the Church, because only those communities that authentically live the ecclesial inspiration without dependencies of any other type will fulfill their essential mission of evangelization. This attention and this effort are a sacred duty of the Successor of Peter, by virtue of "his solicitude for him by all the Churches" (cf. 2 Cor .2, 28). They are a duty of each bishop in his diocese and of the bishops collegially united at the level of a nation. They are also a duty of those who have some responsibility within the communities themselves.

The occasion of this trip seems to me to be the appropriate moment to exhort the base communities of Brazil to keep their ecclesial dimension intact, despite the tendencies or impulses that come from abroad, or from the country itself, in a different sense. If in the past years the Latin American base ecclesial communities, and in particular the Brazilian ones, have shown enormous vitality and have been welcomed as an invaluable pastoral element, if they also had notable repercussions abroad, it was precisely because they knew how to maintain, without deviations or alterations, the ecclesial dimension fleeing from ideological contamination.

I believe that it is not necessary to define again the elements of a true ecclesiality; they all appear clearly enough in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi . Suffice it to remember that this ecclesiality is materialized in a sincere and loyal connection of the community to its legitimate Pastors, in a faithful adherence to the objectives of the Church, in a total openness to other communities and to the great community of the universal Church, an openness that it will avoid all temptation of sectarianism.

4. It is also known that an ecclesial community must necessarily be a community of charity or fraternal love. Not in vain did the Lord, wanting to point out the characteristic trait of his disciples and followers, proclaimed: "By this everyone will know if you are my disciples: if you have love for one another" (Jn 13, 35 ) .

It is a community of charity insofar as its members try to get to know each other more and more, lead a common life, share joys and sorrows, riches and needs. For the rest, what is the first reason for the formation of base communities if not the need and desire to create groups, not massive but human-sized, capable of constituting spaces for true dialogue and life in common?

The base community will be a community of charity above all insofar as it manifests itself as an instrument of service: mutual service within the same community and service to other brothers, especially those most in need. A community that shows itself to be truly ecclesial, —because it is born from an ecclesial impulse, because it follows the objectives of the Church, because it is linked to the Pastors of the Church and because it is willing to listen to the Word of God, to the growth of the faith, to prayer—does not cease to be ecclesial because charity lives. On the contrary, it grows and is consolidated with the concrete practice of charity, as long as this practice is not compromised, as can happen, with political projects.

The charity lived by a community can take very different forms: firstly, helping someone to deepen their own faith; later, it can also manifest itself in gestures of human promotion of depressed people or groups, or gestures of integration of marginalized people; defense of violated human rights; search for justice in situations of injustice; helps to overcome subhuman conditions; promotion of greater solidarity in a given society, etc. All of this, moreover, must bear the mark of true charity as described by Saint Paul: patient, benign, forgetful of herself to care only for others, incapable of rejoicing in evil (cf. 1 Cor 13 , 4 ff.) or Saint John: "No one has a greater love than this of giving one's life for one's friends" (Jn15, 13).

5. In this brief message, there is one last consideration regarding those who exercise a function of spiritual animation in the basic ecclesial communities.

The history, brief but already quite rich, of the base ecclesial communities in Brazil, as in Latin America, seems to show that in them, always under the pastoral responsibility of the legitimate Pastors —from the bishop in the diocese and the priests duly authorized by the bishop—numerous lay people find the possibility of serving the Church through this spiritual animation, which guarantees these communities dynamism and effectiveness. In your regions, where priests are scarce and are often absorbed to the limit of their strength, this collaboration of the laity in a certain task wonderfully extends and multiplies the priest's action.

The function of these leaders of base ecclesial communities is important, since the orientation of the communities depends a lot on them, in close union with the responsible Pastors. Therefore, it has demands that must always be taken into account. It will not hurt to remember some:

Due to its importance, the first is the need, already pointed out, for the leaders to be themselves, in the first place, in communion with the Pastors, if it is desired that the base ecclesial communities remain in this communion.

Secondly, the leader, called to direct the progress of the community and probably to help its members to grow in the faith, must have a serious interest in forming himself, first of all, in the faith. The leader does not transmit his own thought or his doctrine but what he learns and receives from the Church. Hence, his obligation to diligently accept from the mouth of the Church what she wants to tell him: the correct interpretation of divine Revelation in the Bible and in Tradition, the means of salvation, the norms of moral behavior, life of prayer and liturgy, etc.

I will add that, in all cases, a leader of base ecclesial communities is, much more than a teacher, a witness: the community has the right to receive from him a persuasive example of Christian life, of active and irradiating faith, of transcendent hope, selfless love May he also be a man who believes in prayer and who prays.

6. Within the simplicity and modesty of these words, I know that an entire program is briefly outlined, beloved brothers. I entrust it to your reflection and, praying for you, I entrust it to divine assistance. May your communities and you who represent them not lack the gifts that the Spirit grants for the edification of the Church (cf. 1 Cor 14, 12). May this Spirit make sprout and grow in you, as a vital principle of your authentic ecclesiality, a great love for the Church itself, filial love, mature and simple at the same time, tender and determined love, capable of joy and sacrifice. May this love be the inspiration of your life. 
 

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