moving from Jesus’ warning. He warned: “When we are on the street and find

ourselves in front of a closed Church,” he said, “we feel that something is

strange.” Sometimes, he said, “they give us reasons” as to why they are closed:

They give “excuses, justifications, but the fact remains that the Church is

closed and the people who pass by cannot enter.” And, even worse, the Lord

cannot be close to the people. Today, the Pope said, Jesus speaks to us about

the “image of the [lock]”; it is “the image of those Christians who have the key

in their hand, but take it away, without opening the door.” Worse still, “they

keep the door closed” and “don’t allow anyone to enter.” In so doing, they

themselves do not enter. The “lack of Christian witness does this,” he said, and

“when this Christian is a priest, a bishop or a Pope it is worse.” But, the Pope

asks, how does it happen that a “Christian falls into this attitude” of keeping

passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology. And ideology does

not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his

love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And

when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he

is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought…

For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’

The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic

continued, Jesus told us: “You burden the shoulders of people [with] many

things; only one is necessary.” This, therefore, is the “spiritual, mental”

thought process of one who wants to keep the key in his pocket and the door

closed: “The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away

the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the

people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an

illness, but it is not new, eh? Already the Apostle John, in his first Letter,

spoke of this. Christians who lose the faith and prefer the ideologies. His

attitude is: be rigid, moralistic, ethical, but without kindness. This can be

the question, no? But why is it that a Christian can become like this? Just one

thing: this Christian does not pray. And if there is no prayer, you always close

prizing administrative efficiency over missionary zeal, and exalting the

role of clergy to the detriment of the laity are some of the major

“temptations” undermining evangelization in Latin America, Pope Francis

the pope said July 28 at a meeting with the coordinating committee of

the Latin American bishops’ conference, CELAM. “It is important to know