Vatican City, May 6th, 2009
Ref. n. T 144-1 /2007

Dear Madam,

This Congregation has received the documentation of the XII General Chapter of the Secular Franciscan Order with the orientations for the future activities.

Indeed, since November of last year, we have dedicated our utmost attention to the activities that this international Fraternity has implemented with spiritual docility and full commitment towards communion: the General Chapter with its discernment for the choice of the Presidency members; the study of key themes with the choice of the priorities – emerged from mutual reflection and dialogue – useful to reinvigorate the spirit of the Order.

I have received with pleasure the documentation, which shows how some points were lived as a true event of the Spirit:

• The atmosphere that has sustained the work, “perceived as an experience of fraternal life”, and that has nourished communion, as a gift and fruit of common will;
• The development of work, which, in continuity with the previous Chapters, has enabled to focus on the identity and mission of Secular Franciscans in the Church and in the world;
• The living awareness of the presence and expansion of the Order in several nations, particularly in those where religious persecution has reduced the presence of the Church;
• The commitment towards the formation of the members, recognized as a primary necessity, also for the emerging Fraternities.

I exhort you so that the time lived together may bring more abundant fruit, by way of a strong and continuous commitment by each member of the Order. I encourage you, in particular, to the evangelical parresìa in the “city of men”, where the seed of the Divine Word will bring fruit if sowed with humble courage and by giving explanation of the hope which dwells in us (cf. 1Pt 3, 15). I invite you, therefore, to receive the Gospel as a specific commitment of the entire International Fraternity: it introduces to the true, outgoing, far-reaching, missionary intensity directed to the whole world. The Fraternity, as a result, will feel as generated by the word-sign of Jesus and solicited in the very places were mankind actually and concretely lives.

In this missionary attitude, the Order will be able to accept, in the same Franciscan style of the origins, the challenge to manifest the “eschatological” nature of Christian Faith, overcoming the often alienating and estranging interpretations: this is an invitation, therefore, to live your commitment as “implementation of Christianity”, by entering into the spaces of human life and experiencing the transforming power of the “living hope” that the Spirit of the Risen Lord grants us. It is essential to show that the Gospel does not only have to do with the future destiny of men and of the world but that it impacts the “newness” in which we have to live the present, according to the beautiful style of the Seraphic Father, as “pilgrims and strangers” who, with clear mind and free heart, offer an original contribution for the construction of the city of men and of the entire world.

I recommend, in particular, the loving animation of the Franciscan Youth (YouFra). The education of the youth is an arduous and laborious task: in it, the Gospel is confronted with the image and conception of the human person; with the true meaning of daily relations and quality of social connections; with the solicitude for the needy and the poor; with human rights and legality; with the ability to coexist of cultures and peoples; with the origin and the end of existence. The youth will, thus, be able to train themselves to live a fruitful exchange between the specificity of faith and the human way to express it as an “admirabile commercium”.

We expect, to conclude, that this Fraternity may grow in the Church as a living body, founded on communion, and by developing in today’s historical context specific styles of social, cultural and spiritual commitment.

I formulate to you and to the members of the Presidency my wish that your service may be authoritative and gentle at the same time, a testimony of communion. Francis, who, sine glossa, entrusted his followers to the Gospel, written, contemplated and lived, may continue to inspire the ideals, the decisions and the actions of the well-deserving Secular Franciscan Order in the Church.

In Christ, I offer you all blessings,

Franc Card. Rodé, C.M.
Prefect