Pope moves to make Rome a 'living church,' not a 'museum'

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Diocese of Rome, like the Rome city government, has put so much effort into ensuring services in the historic center of the city that it often neglects the growing suburbs where most people live, Pope Francis said.

The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, ordered a reorganization of the diocese’s geographical divisions — a series of “sectors” and “prefectures” similar to deaneries — saying he wanted to create “not walls but bridges” so that Catholics in the suburbs can benefit spiritually from the sacred art and architecture housed in the city center.

The Diocese of Rome published “The True Beauty,” Pope Francis’ document ordering the changes, Oct. 3.

The city center, which has hundreds of churches but only 35 parishes, will no longer be a separate “sector,” but its territory will be divided geographically and added to the existing north, south, east and west sectors “to better integrate the suburbs and the historic center,” the pope said.

“Many outlying areas, and consequently many parishes, although configured within the municipality and Diocese of Rome, have not been treated with the attention to beauty and identity that characterizes Rome,” the pope wrote. At the same time, the historic center “has become increasingly isolated” with the risk of becoming “a museum to be visited” rather than a living church and source of inspiration for all Catholics in the city.

All Catholics in Rome, and not just tourists and foreign pilgrims, should be able to benefit from the city center being “a mine” of spiritual treasures that can enrich parishes in the Rome suburbs throughout the liturgical year, the pope said.

Among his examples, the pope said all Catholics in the city could benefit from retracing St. Philip Neri’s pilgrimage to the “seven churches” — traditionally a 15-mile walk to seven historic basilicas; visiting the catacombs in November to remember the dead; praying at Christmas before what is venerated as the cradle of Jesus in the Basilica of St. Mary Major; visiting the Holy Stairs and the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem during Holy Week; and discovering some of the hundreds of Marian icons in churches and on street corners during the months of May and October.

“To these should be added catechesis through art, making available all the artistic heritage kept in the churches of Rome’s historic center,” the pope wrote.

What happens now, Pope Francis said, is that the city center is the administrative headquarters for the diocese but without a strong pastoral outreach because “often the clergy assigned to the Central Sector are only resident in worship facilities, then living out their ministry in other assignments or offices.”

“The diocese has had difficulty designing an effective pastoral plan capable of meeting the spiritual needs of a population characterized predominantly, but not exclusively, of commuters, business owners and tourists,” the pope said.

In addition, he said, with fewer full-time residents in the city center and a decline in fully functioning parishes, there are hundreds of churches open only occasionally or only for tourist visits, but they are “a heritage with high potential that has long been lying dormant, asking to be rethought and put at the service of God’s people.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky famously said, “Beauty will save the world,” and he was right, the pope said, but “beauty will save the world only if the church succeeds in saving beauty; saving it from the ideological manipulations of false progress and from submission to commerce and economics, which often reduce it to an illusion or an ephemeral consumer good.”

“Behind every work of art in a church lies a catechesis, behind every monument in Christian Rome lies a message to be deciphered and discerned,” and all of them point to Christ, the pope wrote. “But to be able to convey these contents of authentic beauty, they must first be experienced.”

Pope Francis said he hoped the reorganization of the diocese would help “Roman citizens cross bridges of wonder, moved by the attractiveness that beauty brings.”