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La Rioja (Agenzia Fides) – “We begin the season of Lent in the midst of a Jubilee Year and seeking to implement the conclusions of the Synod on Synodality in the Church” is what Dante Braida, Bishop of La Rioja, has declared, inviting the entire population to live this time as “an authentic conversion for the renewal of our lives and that of our communities. With Lent we begin the pastoral year in the context of deepening the synodal dimension of the Church in an atmosphere permeated by the Jubilee year”.
“In this Lent – the prelate continues in the message sent to the diocese – God asks us to check whether in our lives, in our families, in the places where we work, in parish or religious communities, we are capable of walking with others, of listening, of overcoming the temptation to close ourselves in our self-referentiality, taking care only of our needs. Let us ask ourselves before the Lord if we are capable of working together as bishops, priests, consecrated persons and lay people, at the service of the Kingdom of God; if we have an attitude of welcome, with concrete gestures, towards the people who come to us and to those who are far away; if we make people feel part of the community or if we marginalize them.”
“Let us walk this path together,” the bishop insists, in line with Pope Francis’ message for this liturgical time. “Christians are called to walk the path together, never as solitary travelers. The Holy Spirit impels us to go out of ourselves to go toward God and toward our brothers and sisters.”
“To receive the grace and joy that the Risen One wants to give us in abundance, we need to live this time guided by the Holy Spirit toward a profound conversion. Enlightened by the Gospel texts of each day and by the teachings of Pope Francis in his message ‘Let us walk together in Hope,’ let us live the Lenten season with hope. At the same time, let us walk together in the mission that the Lord entrusts to each of us and may the present be a fruitful pastoral year.”
Bishop Braida also recalls that this year the diocese is preparing for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom at the hands of the military dictatorship, after the coup of March 24, 1976, of the bishop of La Rioja Enrique Angelelli, the Conventual Franciscan Carlos de Dios Murias, who was later ordained a priest by Angelelli himself, the French missionary priest Gabriel Longueville in La Rioja and the catechist Wenceslao Pedernera. “It will be an opportunity to delve deeper into the testimony of their lives and the teachings of Bishop Enrique, in particular those that speak to us of the different aspects of the synodal Church.”
“The Jubilee year, whose motto is ‘Pilgrims of Hope’, invites us to fix our gaze on Jesus, the cause of a hope that does not disappoint, and to live a process of personal and community conversion that leads us to be messengers of hope at all times and places,” concludes the prelate. (AP) (Agenzia Fides, 7/3/2025)
