“Rejoice and Be Glad,” Pope Francis’s new apostolic exhortation on “the call to holiness in the modern world,” will be released on April 9, the Vatican has announced.
The document, called “Gaudete et Exsultate” in Latin, will be presented at a Vatican news conference by Archbishop Angelo De Donatis, the papal vicar for the Diocese of Rome.
Joining the archbishop will be Gianni Valente, an Italian journalist working for Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, and Paola Bignardi, an educator and past president of Italian Catholic Action.
This is the third apostolic exhortation signed by pope Bergoglio after, “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), published in 2013, focused on proclaiming the Gospel in the modern world and included proposals from the 2012 synod on new evangelization. “Amoris Laetitia,” (“The Joy of Love”), was released in 2016 and focused on ministry to and with families. It included proposals discussed during sessions of the Synod of Bishops in 2014 and 2015. To these documents are added the two encyclicals. «Laudato si`» May 2015 and Lumen Fidei of 29 June 2013.
_ … to be saints, it is not necessarily necessary to be bishops, priests or religious. We are all called to be saints! Many times, we are tempted to think that holiness is reserved only for those who have the possibility of separating themselves from daily affairs, to dedicate themselves exclusively to prayer. However, is not so!
“Some think that sanctity is that of closing the eyes and putting” the face of a picture “, not that it is not holiness. Holiness is something greater than God gives us! It is exactly living with love and offering Christian witness in the daily occupations in which we are called to become saints.
“Every state of life – he highlighted – leads to holiness, always!” In the morning Mass at Santa Marta Home from 19 January 2016 he pointed out that “there is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future”. The general audience of 21 June 2017, he says that the saints are also “witnesses and companions of hope.” Furthermore, the Pope spoke about holiness through social networks as well, and made his Twitter on November 1st last year when he stressed that the world needs saints and all of us, without exception, are called to holiness “.
