The Jubilee of Confraternities honours the many members of Catholic confraternities around the world, highlighting the value of such groups and their important mission.
PRAYER
Loving God, we pray that you always direct our minds and hearts to you, so that we may be living stones of the Church, and that all that we do, our whole Christian life, may be a luminous witness to your mercy and love.
We pray that we will make our way towards the goal of our earthly pilgrimage, towards that extremely beautiful shrine, the heavenly Jerusalem where you yourself and the Lamb are its temple; and the light of the sun and the moon give way to the glory of the Most High. Amen.
TEACHING
From Pope Francis’ Address to Members of Various Italian Confraternities (2023):
“I would like, then, to invite you to structure your journey along three fundamental lines: evangelism, ecclesiality and missionary spirit. I would summarize this direction as follows:
- to walk in Christ’s footsteps;
- to walk together;
- to walk proclaiming the
“First and foremost, walking in Christ’s footsteps. I urge you to cultivate the centrality of Christ in your life, in daily listening to the Word of God. This is very important: closeness to the Gospel. We must read the Gospel every day. I advise you: get a pocket-sized copy of the Gospel and carry it in your pocket or your bag, and then read something during the day, whenever you have some time. A little bit each day. It makes the Gospel grow, it makes the heart grow.
Physical contact with the Gospel and then spiritual contact. I urge you, then, to cultivate the centrality of Christ, organizing and participating regularly in formative moments, in assiduous partaking of the Sacraments, in an intense life of personal and liturgical prayer. May your ancient liturgical and devotional traditions be inspired by an in intense spiritual life, with fervency, and concrete commitment to charity. And do not be afraid of to refresh them in communion with the journey of the Church, so that they may be a gift that is accessible and comprehensible to all, in the contexts in which you live and work, and a stimulus to approach the faith also for those who are distant.
“Secondly: walking together. The history of the Confraternities offers the Church a centuries- long experience of synodality, which is expressed through community tools of formation, discernment and deliberation, and through living contact with the local Church, with the Bishops and with the Dioceses. May your councils and your assemblies – as beloved Pope Benedict XVI asked you – never be reduced to purely administrative or particularistic meetings; may they always be first and foremost places of listening to God and of the Church, and of fraternal dialogue, characterized by an atmosphere of prayer and sincere charity. Only in this way can they help you to be lively entities and to find new ways of service and evangelization.
“And this brings us to the third dimension of your journey: to walk proclaiming the Gospel, bearing witness to your faith and taking care of your brothers and sisters, especially in the new forms of poverty of our time, as many of you have demonstrated in this time of the pandemic. Study these new forms of poverty carefully. Perhaps we do not know of them, but there are many of these new forms of poverty. In this regard, the history of the Confraternities has a great charismatic heritage. Do not let this heritage go to waste! Keep alive the charism of service and mission, responding with creativity and courage to the needs of our time.”
TESTIMONY
St John Marie Vianney said:
“If anyone has the happiness of being in the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary, they have, in all corners of the globe, brethren who pray for them. For a member of the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary to succeed in losing their soul, they would have to do as much violence to themselves as the other faithful do to save their souls, so abundant are the graces of this Confraternity.”
– From ‘Rosary Confraternity’, EWTN
PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION
For members of confraternities, that they may be open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as they share their faith with others.
We pray to the Lord.
For the Church, that it may continue to empower confraternities to authentically live out their mission in the world.
We pray to the Lord.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to Members of Various Italian Confraternities, 16 January 2023.
Creative Commons Licence
The text of this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – Share Alike 3.0 Australia Licence. Please attribute this publication to the Bishops Commission for Evangelisation, Laity and Ministry, November 2024. This resource may be reproduced or photocopied in its entirety or in part. No copyright fee is payable.