St. Francis de Sales, Model Communicator-Pastor

St. Francis de Sales,

Model Communicator-Pastor

(ANS - Rome – January 24) – Gathering with the bishops of Peru last week, Pope Francis began his address speaking of the great bishop St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, proposing him as an example of a pastor: “He wanted to go to the other [river] bank in search of those who were far away and those who were missing. To this end, he had to leave the comforts of his episcopal see and travel across the territory entrusted to him, in continual pastoral visits, trying to reach and stay wherever he was needed.... Today we would call him a ‘street’ bishop – a bishop with the soles of his shoes consumed by walking, from encounters to announce the Gospel to everyone, in all places, on all occasions, without delay, without repulsion and without fear.”

Speaking of this pastor, the Pope reminds us of many pastors; among them St. Francis de Sales, an innovative man and communicator par excellence, who in his time sought the way to bring people to the faith with profound creativity; he is considered a tireless communicator of truth and the Gospel through his simple, handmade writings distributed door to door, house after house.

Like all great communicators, he had an understanding of the language of his time, understood the concerns and experiences of his people, discovered their deepest needs; from there, he arrived at the truth.

These communicators and pastors who did not refuse or fail to see the tensions of their time, nor the differences within their people, came to understand perfectly that words and writings are not enough; they also intuited that if we want to reach the hearts and minds of people and truly communicate with them, it is necessary to transform one’s own attitude of life, assume as one’s own those very same values one wishes to communicate.

St. Francis de Sales was aware that evangelization could not take place at any distance from charity; the best way to communicate the truth was to shape the gift of Jesus into his own life for the love of everyone and make of his own person and his own life the means of transmitting the message.

St. Turibius of Mogrovejo and St. Frances de Sales lived in different social contexts, but both men shared this profound intuition of understanding the reality of their time, capable of sharing questions and doubts, able to walk a path, free themselves from any presumption of omnipotence, and humbly put themselves at the service of the common good.

Both serve as examples and challenges for Catholic communicators everywhere as every era stands as an invitation to learn in order to speak “giving a reason for our hope” (1 Pet 3:15), to spread the Gospel as the Pope proposes today: denouncing social injustices, promoting the unity of the Church, and speaking the current languages of today’s young people.

Finally, both figures are examples of a Church that is constantly on the move, shepherds who wore out their shoes walking the streets and went wherever they were needed; both tried to reach the other shores, not only geographically, but existentially approaching those who were far away with the keen desire to meet and know them, to understand their needs, and to propose the Gospel to them.