Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Pope urges Colombians: Take in sinners
MEDELLIN, Colombia — Pope Francis flew to a rainsoaked Medellin on Saturday to console orphans, the poor and sick — and to demand priests and ordinary Colombians look beyond rigid church doctrine to care for sinners and welcome them in.
“My brothers, the church is not a customs post,” Francis said. “It wants its doors to be open.”
Francis was tending to in-house church business on his penultimate day in Colombia, after having spent the first half of his trip encouraging its fragile new peace process.
At the Mass, Francis urged Colombia’s conservative church to look beyond rigid rules and norms of church doctrine to go out and find sinners and minister to them.
“It is of the greatest importance that we who call ourselves disciples not cling to a certain style or to particular practices that cause us to be more like some Pharisees than like Jesus,” he said. Those in the early church who stuck so closely to the rules became “paralyzed by a rigorous interpretation and practice of that law,” he said.
Francis has frequently riled conservatives by criticizing their rigid interpretation of church norms, particularly in matters of sexual ethics and family life. He says such strict observation of norms is anathema to Jesus’ message of mercy and welcome to all, especially sinners.
After the Mass, Francis was heading to an orphanage to meet with abandoned children and the sick. He also had a meeting with priests, seminarians, nuns and their families in Medellin’s La Macarena stadium before he was to return to Bogota for the night.
He heads to Cartagena today to honor St. Peter Claver, a 17th-century Jesuit who ministered to the tens of thousands of Africans who were transported to the port to be sold as slaves. He returns to Rome tonight.