CBCP to clergy: Be servant leaders, renew religious ways
Archbishop Romulo Valles on Sunday urged the clerygymen to aim the integral renewal of the values and do away with their "dismal shadows."
Valles, the new president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said misconducts of some "men of the cloth" call for repentance, reparation, and renewal.
"We aim towards the integral renewal of the values, mind-sets, behavior, and life-styles of the Clergy and Consecrated Persons, [f]ollowing the example of the Good Shepherd,” Valles said in his first pastoral exhortation.
The new liturgal year is dedicated for the clergy and religious, Valles said last Dec. 3, the first Sunday of Advent.
Valles emphasized that “frailty and scandals” brought by some of the religious should serve as a call for renewal and repentance.
“May these faults point us to new and vast possibilities of renewal and communion with those who are weak and broken,” he said.
Valles said some of the clergy and religious forget their mission of evangelization because of their desire for power and attachment to material possessions.
“They seem far from God and from following his will. Some get entangled in their concern for material possessions, in their need for pleasures and in their desire for power,” he said.
“Instead of becoming servant-leaders of communion they may even lead us to confusion and disharmony,” he added.
The Year of the Clergy and Consecrated Persons was the sixth year of the nine years of preparation for the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christianity in the Philippines.