Cardinals must remember primary call to serve, Argentine cardinal says

VATICAN CITY  — As successors to the apostles, members of the College of Cardinals are called to follow the example of Christ who came to serve and not be served, the subdean of the college said.

Celebrating a memorial Mass for Pope Francis April 30, Argentine Cardinal Leonardo Sandri said that the cardinals, from those who serve in faraway dioceses to those in the Roman Curia, must be mindful that “to reign is to serve, like the Master and Lord, who is in our midst as one who serves.”

“One of the titles that tradition attributes to the bishop of Rome is indeed ‘Servus Servorum Dei’ (‘Servant of the Servants of God’),” Cardinal Sandri said. “Pope Francis lived this, choosing various places of suffering and loneliness to carry out the washing of the feet” on Holy Thursday, “but also kneeling and kissing the feet of the leaders of South Sudan, imploring the gift of peace.”

St. Paul VI, he added, also fulfilled this duty “with that same style considered scandalous by many, yet strongly evangelical,” when he kissed the feet of Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon in 1975.

Cardinal Sandri celebrated the Mass on the fifth day of the “novendiali,” the nine days of mourning for Pope Francis marked with Masses in St. Peter’s Basilica.

In his homily, he noted that on Easter the church proclaimed, “Nuntio vobis gaudium magnum quod est Alleluia” or, in English, “I announce to you a great joy, which is Alleluia.”

The words are similar to what the crowds in St. Peter’s Square will hear after the cardinals elect a new pope: “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum, habemus papamm,” which can be translated as “I announce to you a great joy: We have a pope!”

The similarities, the cardinal said, arise because “it is from the Paschal experience of Christ,” from his self-giving passion, death and resurrection, “that the ministry of the successor of Peter finds its meaning.”

The celebration of memorial Masses for the late pope, he added, are an opportunity to “strengthen us, precisely so that we renew our profession of faith in the resurrection of the body, in the forgiveness of sins — even those of a man who became pope — and in renewing the awareness that the unity of the story of every person is in God’s hands.”

Recalling the first reading from the Acts of Apostles, which recounted St. Peter announcing Christ’s resurrection on Pentecost, Cardinal Sandri said that much like the apostles proclaimed the Good News to all, Christians are called to “encounter and dialogue between generations,” as Pope Francis had often encouraged.

Cardinal Sandri, who at 81 is too old to enter the conclave May 7, told his fellow cardinals that the late pope “also leaves this word to the College of Cardinals, made up of young and more elderly,” so that they “may let themselves be taught by God, to perceive the dream he has for his church, and to try to realize it with youthful and renewed enthusiasm.”

“Our dear Holy Father loved to repeat” the words of Joel 3:1, he said, quoting, “Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”

Pope Francis, he said, emphasized “the need for the elderly to share their dreams with the young, and likewise for the young, with their energy and vision, to be able with God’s help to make them reality.”