Identity and the ‘slap’ of the Gospel

As he answered the first of the journalists’ questions, that of Fatima Alnajem, the “Bahrain News Agency” correspondent, the Pope reflected out loud upon the experience of his recently concluded trip, indicating the keyword: dialogue. He pointed out, however, that the condition for real and fruitful dialogue is the presence of two identities meeting, not vague and confused identities, but clear and strong ones. Pope Francis returned to this idea of identity, implicitly but with special emphasis, in his answer to the final question, posed by German journalist Ludwig Rin-Eifel, of the Centrum Informationis Catholicum, who compared the Catholic Church in Bahrain (small in number but growing thanks to a great liveliness rich in hope) to the Church in Germany (rich in money and with a great theological tradition, but in sharp decline amidst a ...