Pope Francis: to clergy and religious, “the Church is like a river, the important thing is to be inside the river”

“None of us is the whole, we are all part of a body, the body of Christ, the Church, the particular Church: those who claim to be everything, are wrong. But this is learned from the seminar “. The Pope said that in his speech with the clergy and the religious of Genoa he quoted “a good archbishop of yours, Canestri, who said that the Church is like a river: the important thing is to be inside the river.

If you are a bit ‘more in the middle or more to the right or left, but inside the river: this is a licit variety. ” “So many times we see that the river becomes small, we only want it on our side, and we condemn others, and this is not brotherhood”, he warned: “All inside the river. This is learned in the seminar “.

Hence the “advice to formators”: “If you see a good, intelligent seminarian, but who is a talker, throw it away, because this will be a mortgage for the presbyteral brotherhood, if you do not correct it, kick it away from the beginning. In my part it is said: raise crows and eat your eyes. If you relieve them, the ravens will destroy any brotherhood in the presbytery.

“Also for the relations between pastor and deputy parish priest, “the important thing is to be inside the river, and not to talk about each other, but to seek unity. We must take the gifts, the riches, the charisms of each and this is important. The fathers of the desert teach us a lot about this, about brotherhood, about forgiveness, about everything “. “There are some help that what they are looking for is to destroy”, the Pope’s cry of alarm: “They are not aid, they are disguised as aid: in the murmuring there is always this”. “When we are faced with sins,