The Year of Mercy was the focus of a meeting of 14 bishops from the Americas who gathered in Tampa, Florida to discuss how to invite the faithful into what Pope Francis has called “an encounter with Jesus Christ”.
Representatives of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Latin American bishops’ council, known as CELAM, and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops attended the February 22-25 meeting, the 38th of its kind.
Louisville, Kentucky’s Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, president of the US bishops’ conference, said the bishops grappled with how they could respond in mercy to people who are struggling. He noted how Pope Francis’ first Lenten letter had distinguished between poverty and destitution, saying “Christ calls us to live in poverty and simplicity, but no one should live in destitution”.
Corporal works
The corporal works of mercy were discussed at length, he said, with the conversation expanding beyond matters such as homelessness, to take in moral and spiritual destitution in local communities and how to show people that “mercy has a face”.
Other topics addressed included immigration, evangelisation of urban communities, native peoples’ rights, physician-assisted suicide, the danger of pornography, and the growing threat to religious freedom around the world.