Pope's charity arm on retreat for spiritual renewal

The Pope’s charity arm, the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, has scheduled a week-long spiritual retreat at the Marian shrine of Jasna Gora in Czestochowa, Poland to reinvigorate the hearts and minds of continental Europe’s Catholic aid workers. 

European Bishops and the Directors/Presidents of the continent’s diocesan Caritas and other Catholic charitable organizations are attending the spiritual excercises from 29 November – 3 December.

Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, an official at Cor Unum told Tracey McClure that the spiritual exercises have been called for the last few years in response to Pope Benedict’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est. 

In today’s increasingly secularized world, notes Msgr Figueiredo, “people have distanced themselves from God and the faith is being snuffed out.” How do we get people back to know God? He wonders.

“Pope Benedict very strongly believes that it is through charity.”

“Christian charitable organizations have changed. In our time, there’s been a plethora of organizations which have grown in the last decades. But the very nature of charity is change. In the past, it was very much religious congregations - the sisters, the priests – who ran hospitals, nursing homes, aid agencies. And of course today we have a decline in religious congregations.”

Most people working in charitable fields now are lay people, Msgr Figueiredo points out.

“A Catholic charity (worker) is one who has the same sentiments as Jesus Christ… the heart of a Christian charity worker is to become as much as possible like the one we serve.” “We don’t look down (on those we serve); we don’t patronize… we become one. We put ourselves absolutely in their shoes.”

“We also need to be missionaries of Jesus Christ. And that’s really what we do in these spiritual exercises. For a week, we put people in front of Christ … we’re so busy, we have so many projects (to do)…we need to have time to put ourselves in front of Christ. When we do that, we find we are renewed, we’re reinvigorated, and we have more time for those we serve.”

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