In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Peace be with you.

Welcome to you all! Let us sit down and reflect together a little.

Dear brothers and sisters,

I welcome you with joy on the occasion of your Chapters and Assemblies. I greet the Superiors General, the members of the Councils, and all of you.

You have gathered to pray, to discuss and to reflect together on what the Lord asks of you for the future. Your Founders and Foundresses, docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, have left you the legacy of various charisms for the edification of the Body of Christ (cf. Eph 4:11-12), and it is precisely so that this may grow according to God’s plans that the Church asks of you the service that you are carrying out (cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Decree Perfectae caritatis, 4).

Your respective Institutes embody complementary aspects of the life and action of all the People of God: the offering of self in union with the Sacrifice of Christ, the mission ad gentes, love for the Church preserved and transmitted, the education and formation of the young. These are different ways in which the one and eternal reality that animates them all is expressed in charismatic form: God's love for humanity.

As is customary, then, each of your Congregations identified particular angles, in the light of which to reinterpret the legacy received, in order to update and modernize its contents. These pathways of work, which you chose during the time of preparation, in prayer and mutual listening, are also a precious gift insofar as they are the fruit of the Spirit. It is He who, through the contribution of many, under the guidance of the Pastors, “helps the Christian community to advance in charity towards the fullness of truth (cf. Jn 16:13)” (Benedict XVI, Homily at the Holy Mass for the Inauguration of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, 13 May 2007). You have thus formulated guidelines that contain fundamental calls: to renew an authentic missionary spirit, to make one's own the attitude “that is also yours in Christ Jesus” (cf. Phil 2:5), to promote peace, to cultivate pastoral co-responsibility in local churches, and so on. To stay by their side and to remember them together, at this time, helps us to grasp the richness of our being in a community, especially as men and women religious, engaged in the same wonderful adventure of “[following] Christ more nearly” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 916).

May this renew and confirm in all of us the awareness and the joy of being Church, and in particular spur you, in your discernment in the Chapters, to think on a large scale, as unique pieces of a plan that exceeds you and involves you beyond your own expectations: the plan of salvation with which God wants to bring all of humanity back to himself, as one big family (cf. Francis, General Audience, 29 May 2013). This is the spirit in which your Institutes were born, and this is the perspective in which to place every effort, so that it may contribute, through small lights, to spreading over the whole earth the light of Christ, which never dims (cf. Roman Missal, Easter Precony).

Dear friends, let us ask the Lord together to be docile to the voice of his Spirit, who “teaches everything” (cf. Jn 14:26), and without whose help, in our weakness, we do not even know how to ask as we ought (cf. Rom 8:26).

Thank you for your work and for your faithful presence in so many parts of the world. I bless you from my heart, and I pray for you. Thank you!

Let us pray together:

[Our Father]

[Blessing]

Thank you all!

__________________

Daily Bulletin of the Holy See Press Office, 12 July 2025