For Cardinal Fernando Filoni, “John Mary Vianney continues his pastoral mission today in a different way but no less effective. So this Shrine is still a place of goodness, of prayer and of grace. Mercy continues to be distributed here to those who seek it,” he said.
Cardinal Filoni delivered his homily at Ars on August 4, feast of Saint John Mary Vianney, Patron of parish priests worldwide, reported the Vatican agency Fides. The news also appeared in the columns of L’Osservatore Romano in Italian on August 5, 2017.
The Italian Cardinal stressed several times the strength of the Cure of Ars priestly spirituality. “Innumerable priests come here to find inspiration for their priestly life and I do too. Today I am a pilgrim, recalling the years of my formation in the Seminary, when, in preparation for the priestly life, the Saint Cure of Ars was considered the prototype of the parish priest.”
Saint John Mary Vianney, said Cardinal Filoni, exercised constantly the “holy virtues” of humility, poverty, obedience and chastity, which lead him on the way of sanctity of life and, therefore, of extraordinary pastoral fecundity, reason for which he arouses the admiration and esteem of numerous faithful, especially numerous penitents seeking inner peace.”
The Prefect of the “missionary Dicastery” noted that the mission of deliverance from sin, exercised by the cure of Ars for the benefit of his people, included as well “the mission to warn against evil, to recover sinners and push them to change their life. Like the prophet Ezekiel, Saint John Mary Vianney felt the same responsibility before God: if you don’t warn the evil one, if you don’t speak to him so that he gives up his bad conduct and lives, the evil one will certainly die because of his iniquity, but — says the Lord – he will ask you to account for his death; however, if you warn him and he does not sin, he will live and you will have saved your life.”
The Cardinal entrusted to the Saint Cure his Dicastery’s mission and all priests that depend on it. “As head of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, I asked Saint John Mary Vianney for his intercession for our Seminaries and for the clergy of the young Churches of the mission territories entrusted by the Holy Father to our ecclesial care.”
