Pope Francis: ‘Let us ask ourselves if, in our hearts, we love the Church’

Pope Francis encouraged Catholics on Wednesday to love the Church, recognizing the “goodness and holiness” within it as well as the “inconsistencies” and sins.

At his general audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall on Feb. 16, the pope said that only love enabled people to “speak the truth fully.”

“We live in a time in which it is common to criticize the Church, to point out its inconsistencies — there are many — its sins, which in reality are our inconsistencies, our sins, because the Church has always been a people of sinners who encounter God’s mercy,” he said.

“Let us ask ourselves if, in our hearts, we love the Church. The people of God on a journey, with many limitations but with a great desire to serve and love God. In fact, only love makes us capable of speaking the truth fully, in a non-partisan way; of saying what is wrong, but also of recognizing all the goodness and holiness that are present in her, starting precisely with Jesus and Mary.”

“To love the Church, to guard the Church, and to walk with the Church. But the Church is not that little group that is close to the priest and bosses everyone around, no. The Church is all of us, everyone. On the road. Guarding one another, guarding each other.”

The pope dedicated his live-streamed general audience to “St. Joseph, patron of the Universal Church.” He explained that it would be the final installment in his cycle of catechesis on Jesus’ foster father, which he launched in November 2021.

He said that the catecheses were intended to complement his apostolic letter Patris corde, which marked the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of St. Joseph as patron of the Catholic Church by Blessed Pius IX.

Pope Francis said that the title was rooted in the Gospels.

“In fact, at the end of every story in which Joseph is the protagonist, the Gospel notes that he takes the Child and His mother with him and does what God has ordered him to do,” he said.

“Thus, the fact that Joseph’s task is to protect Jesus and Mary stands out. He is their principal guardian: ‘Indeed, Jesus and Mary His Mother are the most precious treasure of our faith,’ and this treasure is guarded by St. Joseph,” he added, citing Patris corde.

The pope described the Holy Family — Jesus, Mary, and Joseph — as “the primordial nucleus of the Church.”

“And we too ‘must always ask ourselves whether we are protecting Jesus and Mary with all our strength, who are mysteriously entrusted to our responsibility, our care, our custody,’” he said, again quoting his apostolic letter.

“And here there is a very beautiful mark of the Christian vocation: to guard. To guard life, to guard human development, to guard the human mind, to guard the human heart, to guard human work. The Christian is — we can say — like St. Joseph: he must guard. To be a Christian is not only to receive the faith, to confess the faith, but to guard life, one’s own life, the life of others, the life of the Church.”