Pope Benedict XVI and the New Ecclesial Movements

Pope Benedict XVI and the New Ecclesial Movements | Bishop Stanislaw Rylko, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity | The Introduction to New Outpourings of the Spirit by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

Pope Benedict XVI has been following for many years, with the passion of a theologian and a pastor, the phenomenon of the movements and new communities that sprang up in the Church after the Second Vatican Council. His very first contacts with these ecclesial entities go back to the mid-1960s, when he was still a professor in Tubingen. [1] Then, with the passage of time, these relations became deeper and more intense and were transformed into a true friendship. In 1998, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he reminisced as follows: "For me personally it   was a marvelous event when at the beginning of the seventies I first came into close contact with movements like the Neocatechumens, Comunione e Liberazione, and the Focolarini and thus experienced the enthusiasm and verve with which they lived out their faith and felt bound to share with others, from out of the joy of their faith, what had been vouchsafed to them." [2] These were the postconciliar years, difficult years for the Church, but these new entities unexpectedly appeared to the eyes of the theologian and pastor as a providential gift. As he later wrote, "Suddenly here was something nobody had planned on. The Holy Spirit had, so to say, spoken up for himself again. In young people especially, the faith was surging up in its entirety, with no ifs and buts, with no excuses or way out, experienced as a favor and as a precious life-giving gift." [3]

Alongside the Servant of God John Paul II, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger was an authoritative interpreter of the latter's magisterial teaching on the ecclesial movements and the new communities and became for them a sure point of reference.

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