‘Evangelii Gaudium’ and the essentials of faith

Speaking to around 3,000 people gathered in front of the Shrine of Ta’ Pinu on the Maltese island of Gozo, on Saturday afternoon, 2 April, Pope Francis explored the essentials of the faith. Many were struck by his off-the-cuff remark: “The joy of the Church is to evangelize”. Pope Francis did not repeat it only once, but seven times. He concluded each paragraph by repeating that the Church’s joy is the act of evangelization: Evangelii Gaudium, the title of his November 2013 Apostolic Exhortation which has become the road map of his Pontificate. Returning to the origins, said the Pope, is not a vague notion of improbable dips into a remote past, nor is it the idealization of bygone eras, never to return. Returning to the origins means returning to the essential, that is, recovering the spirit of the first Christian community and ...