“The bishop is to educate the faithful in the spirit of sharing and genuine charity,” the cardinal, who is president of the Holy See’s charitable federation, told the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ annual plenary. “Every Christian community must have a heart which sees the miseries which, tragically persist around it and can attend to them.”
The cardinal, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, told the story of a priest in Brazil who, during the annual Lent campaign to help the poor, wondered how many poor people attended his own parish. The priest did a survey and discovered 15 families in extreme poverty. Instead of always asking for money to help the poor, the priest realized something had to be done for the families in his own parish, the cardinal said. He gathered members of his faithful to find ways to help. One said he could offer work to one of the families. Others stepped forward with offers.
“They were organizing and it was beautiful,” said Rodríguez.
“We need more organized pastoral reaction,” he said, noting this comes from “knowing the reality” and acting on this.
“It’s very important for the work of caritas to start at the local level,” he said. At the same time, bishops must also examine how the Church exercises charity on a national level through episcopal conferences, and at the universal level through the Holy See.
He warned the Church is “living through a time of grave crisis.”
“It’s not just an economic crisis, nor is it only a cultural crisis, nor is it a crisis of faith. Today, humankind is in danger. Today, the body of Christ is in danger,” he said. “As Pope Francis said, our civilization has established a throwaway culture. If it’s no use throw it away, into the garbage! Children, the elderly and outsiders. This is the crisis we’re living through.”
He told the Canadian bishops that his organization's mission "is to serve the poor, and even more the poorest of them first. This is our raison d’être and thus Caritas is at the heart of the Church’s mission of diakonia."
“For many people in need, Caritas is the loving face of Christ who brings relief and comfort, respect and recognition,” he said. “As Caritas we are called to witness His love and we do it with enthusiasm. We know that God is love and we know and believe that He has created every single person in his image.”
Among the challenges is to ensure Caritas is at the heart of the Church and not merely a fundraising NGO.
Many times Caritas is “seen as a source of employment,” he said. People have asked him, “Now that you are leading this, couldn’t you get me a job?” But Caritas “works mainly with volunteers,” he said. Spain has one of the best Caritas organizations in the world, made up of 62,000 volunteers, organized out of 6,000 parishes. As Spain experiences a crisis of unemployment, with millions of people out of work and austerity measures, Caritas Spain is serving a million food packages a day, he said. Donations keep rising and the agency is “the most respected institution in all Spain.”
“When there is a motivation of the people of God, Caritas is growing,” he said.
The cardinal warned that “without the participation of the parish,” there is a danger “of Caritas organizations” becoming “only a bureaucracy distributing funds.”
“The love of neighbour, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful, but it is also a task of the entire ecclesial community at all levels, from the local community to the diocesan one, from the particular Church to the universal Church as a whole,” he said. “Because it is truly an activity of the Church herself, as well as an essential dimension of the Church, the charitable activity must be directly reconnected to the episcopal ministry.”
Rodríguez drew heavily on Pope Benedict’s teachings in his encyclicals Deus Caritas Est and Caritas in Veritate in his talk entitled “The role of the bishop in justice, peace and caritas.” The cardinal summed up the points of Benedict’s Intima Ecclesiae Natura, or On the Service of Charity, that need special attention from Catholic charities. Among them, they must revise their statutes to emphasize their link to the Church and their fidelity to the Church’s teachings.
“Organizations have the ecclesial duty to preserve communion with the bishops. They should not interpret this as a disciplinary issue, but as an expression of our belonging to the Church.”
The Canadian bishops' development agency, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, is a member of the 164-member Caritas Internationalis federation Rodríguez heads. He thanked the bishops for the work D&P has done in his native Honduras, helping those affected by hurricanes or the devastation caused by international mining companies. He also mentioned the key efforts D&P is making in building a communication network in francophone Africa and its response to the drought in West Africa.