The entire Community of the Pontifical Institute of Moral Theology Alphonsian Academy – Teachers, Students, Authorities and Collaborators – joins its prayers with that of the Universal Church for the passing of the Holy Father Francis today, 21 April 2025. His earthly pilgrimage, which ended in the year of the Jubilee of Hope that he wanted, is for all of us a sign of living and concrete testimony of spiritual and moral life, and is an invitation – as he himself has had the opportunity to remind us several times – to “think” of moral theology as a service to the People of God, as a knowledge that does not hesitate to “get its hands dirty”, a discourse capable of reconciling scientific rigor with the continuous commitment to making us meet and welcome Christ in the concreteness of daily life.
Our academic community had the joy of meeting him twice during his Pontificate: on the occasion of the special audience, he granted on 9 February 2019 for the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Alphonsian Academy (1949-2019) and on the occasion of the audience of 23 March 2023 at the end of the Conference “Saint Alphonsus, pastor of the least and doctor of the Church. The relevance of the Alphonsian moral proposal between challenges and hope” promoted by our Institute. On these and other occasions, the Holy Father Francis has always invited the Alphonsian Academy not to fail in its formative mission, in the commitment to study how to embody in today and listening to reality the ministerial task of accompanying consciences in discernment.
To the Father of all mercy we raise our prayers, grateful for the gift of his Pontificate.
(source: alfonsiana.org)
Read also: …moral life is an education in humanity and not a rhetoric of schemes – Interview with Pope Francis by Alfonso V. Amarante, C.Ss.R.
