It has been an honor to have with us for the opening of school p . Christiano for his great pastoral and

organizational work at one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America and as a person who has

worked closely with Bergoglio during the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America.

His keynote address brought us their enthusiasm and freshness of the pastoral thinking coming Aparecida

where Pope Francis continually draws inspiration.

Discipleship and church in outgoing were presented as elements criteriologici background choices and

pastoral planning for the Church today.

The reflection had as main theme the person of the disciple, and the ecclesiological paradigm of the

Church as missionary communion, with the emphasis on the person who ' follow Jesus '.
In close consonance with Aparecida Francis proposed in Evangelii Gaudium a second hermeneutical key

complementary to the disciple and that we can call the Church ' outgoing ' , a name that explains the

significance of a Church profoundly extrovert.

With these assumptions , the exposure has come close to understanding the concepts of pastoral sense and disciple of the Church ' outgoing ' , trying to thrash out their importance to the pastoral theology and, in particular, to the  criteriological dimension of itself.

 

Discipleship in Aparecida means then as the result of the meeting, is the answer to the love given and the beginning of all authentic Christian life . The disciple is a follower, and the object of his follow is not primarily a doctrine, a law or ethics, but a person, who is the Son of God.
This concept has led to a paradigm shift: one in which the center of the theological-pastoral reflection was in the ' object ' of evangelization and activity of the Church , to another in which the center is the ' subject ', understood as a disciple .

The Church in outgoing. In his first Apostolic Exhortation, Francis proposes a new strategic key to the pastoral conversion from the ecclesiology of communion ( cfr . LG 1 ) , which enriches the already mentioned key disciple . This understanding demands a revolutionary " pastoral conversion " ( EG 25 ) , leading to the structures of the Church being used as channels or sent to " the evangelization of today's world , more than for self-preservation " ( EG 27 ).

 

It's implied a criticism of a way of seeing and understanding the Church in the world. The critique of an ecclesiology that led pastorally to forms of self-realization, with characteristics 'narcissistic', 'self-preservative', with a strong accent within the Church. The focus of attention, in fact, was pre-eminently in the organization of the Church itself -in its structure- more than in the people who make it up; in pastoral plans more than in the Gospel that you have to announce; in the roadmap more than in the same way (see. EG 82) postponing, paradoxically, the missionary significance that explains the essence of the Church.
The reality described favored the 'confinement' of the baptized within the parishes, movements or church organizations, emerging as the paradigm of the Christian 'pastoral agent', and as the natural ideology of the lay vocation, the participation in the structures of the Church (parishes , base communities, movements, etc.). As noted Francis "although it receives a participation of many lay ministries, this commitment is not reflected in the penetration of Christian values ​​in the social, political and economic" (EG 10), producing the contradictory situation in which the disciples, many times, "limited to intra-ecclesial tasks without a real commitment to the application of the Gospel to the transformation of society" (Ibid.)

 

Progressively, the understanding of a church more ' charismatic ' that ' structural ' , that without disregarding the value of its required internal organization , it revitalizes not thanks to his countless efforts structuralists , nor its organizations or its programs , but because the force the coming of the Holy Spirit , which nourishes and unifies the common mission of the different and forced to ' espropriarsi ' , to deprive himself of herself , trying to be more for the ' ' other ' and to the ' other ' , because his mission is ' beside himself ' .

The keys marked offer us a new way to understand the Church's pastoral action , assuming that they are not the structures nor the internal configuration , but the disciples and the Church ' out ' of reading codes that allow you to include a new way of understanding and joint ministry.