The Vatican is creating a new office to serve the Catholic charismatic renewal movement. The new body aims to fulfill Pope Francis’ desire to promote greater unity across the movement and strengthen its key role in the Church’s evangelical and ecumenical outreach.
VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis has wanted the creation of a single service dedicated to Catholic Charismatic Renewal organizations since 2015, a vision that is now becoming a reality through the creation of CHARIS (Catholic Charismatic Renewal International Service), which will be officially instituted on December 8. This new body within the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life will replace the two existing services known as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Service and the Catholic Fraternity. For the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Movement in June 2017, Pope Francis has already asked the two bodies to meet to organize the celebration at the Circus Maximus in Rome. On this occasion, the Pope quoted the late Belgian Cardinal Leo Suenens, the most powerful episcopal promoter of the movement in its early days, who called it “ a current of grace, a renewed breath of the Spirit for all the members of the Church.”
The international service will be made up of 18 members, plus a moderator and an ecclesiastical assistant, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Papal Household and a long-time supporter of the charismatic movement. The officers of the service will take office in full on 9 June 2019, the Solemnity of Pentecost. “ Creating unity in service means creating synergies, but even more so generating communion, fraternity and cooperation,” said Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. According to the cardinal, this papal desire to serve the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement in a more effective way can be seen, among other things, as a will to help deepen and promote the grace of baptism in the Holy Spirit throughout the Church, to promote the exercise of charisms not only in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal but also throughout the Church and to encourage commitment to evangelization, in particular through the New Evangelization and the evangelization of Culture.»
As a simple service, CHARIS does not claim to play a leading role vis-à-vis the various charismatic institutions, which will all remain under the jurisdiction of their own ecclesiastical authority. “I hope that CHARIS will be able to offer a valid service for the many and varied expressions of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal that the Holy Spirit has already inspired, and for those yet to come, for the good of all the faithful,” declared Cardinal Farrell. The ecumenical dimension – unity – that Pope Francis seeks through this new body is also intended to promote greater communion within Christendom at large, as affirmed in the canonical status of the service. Indeed, as Paolo Maino, president of the Italian Via Pacis community and CHARIS member for Europe, notes, “ The ecumenical dimension is part of the DNA of the charismatic renewal.”
Maino hopes that CHARIS can be an instrument of mediation and even a means of reconciliation with certain entities that have been left out of the Charismatic Renewal in the past, and thus alleviate certain accumulated tensions. " From now on, every entity of the Charismatic Renewal can sit at the table with equal dignity and say to itself: “We all work for the same Father; we all work for Jesus Christ; we share the same goal.” A similar idea was expressed by South African-born auxiliary bishop Peter Smith of the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, and CHARIS representative for North America and the Caribbean, who highlighted the growing ecumenical dimension of the movement. Indeed, while dialogue between charismatics of different Christian denominations was rather sporadic at the beginning of the movement, they now tend to see each other “ more and more as brothers and sisters,” he said. Recalling a meeting that he had with Pope Francis at two years old, Bishop Smith revealed the image that the Pope chose to illustrate the best way to begin relational ecumenism: Everybody On board, Saint-Père declared: “ Go get some ice cream and go for a walk.” It was an image that implicitly evokes the need for all Christians to cordially share everything they can, even if it is only the beginning of a relationship.
Furthermore, Bishop Smith praised the great “re-evangelizing” power of the movement. Through its presence in more than 200 countries, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal is indeed an emblematic case of the globalization of religion. The international movement was born in the United States in 1967, after a Bible study group at Duquesne University received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Since then, the movement has grown steadily throughout the world and now includes about 122 million people. According to Bishop Smith, one of the strengths of the movement is that it began in the West and quickly moved to other places. It now has a very strong and growing presence in the Third World, thanks to some missionaries who have experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the United States and then returned to their country. Long-standing papal commitment Pope Francis’ commitment to the advancement of the charismatic movement is not unique. In fact, every pope since St. Paul VI has received Charismatic Renewal groups on the day of Pentecost.
The president of the Fondacio movement, François Prouteau, who will represent the charismatic associations recognized by the Holy See within CHARIS, said the new initiative represents a concrete response to the prayers of popes since the Second Vatican Council for the gift of a “new Pentecost”: a breath of life that would give the Church new impetus and dynamism, just as it has done in all previous periods of Church history. Stressing that the mission assigned by the sovereign pontiff to each member of the service is “ communion above all,” Prouteau hopes that the latter will continue to “ nurture in them the hope… that he generated with the creation of CHARIS.”
“I think CHARIS has enormous potential to spread the culture of Pentecost more widely throughout the Church,” agreed Mary Healy, professor of Sacred Scripture at Greater Sacred Heart of Detroit and president of the Doctrinal Services Commission of the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Rome. “ Many Catholics have no idea of the scope and diversity of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. It includes prayer groups, lay communities, religious orders, schools of evangelization, healing and deliverance ministries, and a wide variety of other entities.” Among the various specific advantages of the new body, Healy noted, “ the fact that CHARIS is a “public juridical person” in canon law means the renewal will have greater visibility than in the past. “It will be better placed to serve the local Church and, above all, to bring the dynamism and creativity of the Charismatic Renewal to evangelization.” Register correspondent Solène Tadie writes from Rome.
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