Cardinal Bergoglio’s note is a document of what happened before the election of the Pope. Each prelate had three and a half minutes to speak and Cardinal Bergoglio wrote by hand a short text that is now preserved in the Archdiocese of Havana, in Cuba.
The note concluded: "Thinking about the next pope, there is need of a man, who by contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ helps the Church to go out of itself towards the people on the margins of humanity, in order to be a fertile mother of the 'sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.”
The address also included some other points:
"It referred to evangelization which is the reason for the Church. 'Let us preserve the delightful and comforting joy of evangelizing, even when it is necessary (...) so that it may be proclaimed and the Church established in the midst of the world' (Paul VI). It is the same Jesus Christ who pushes us from within.
1) Evangelizing calls for apostolic zeal. Evangelizing requires of the Church 'frankness' about itself. The Church is called to come out of itself and go to the margins not only geographical, but also in human terms, where the mystery of sin, pain, injustice and ignorance dwells, where there is contempt for religious and for religious thinking, and where there are all kinds of misery.
2) When the Church does not reach out to evangelize, it becomes self-preoccupied, and it falls ill. The evils that affect church institutions over time are self-preoccupation and a kind of theological narcissism.
3) When the Church is self-preoccupied, it thinks involuntarily that it has its own light. It is no longer the certainty of aiming for the 'mysterium lunae' (the mystery of the moon). Rather it is heading for a serious illness known as spiritual worldliness. […] Put simply, there are two images of the Church: the evangelizing Church and the worldly Church that lives in and of itself. This analysis should shed light on the possible changes and reforms that need to be made for the salvation of souls ".
Source: Aleteia
