Opus Dei re-strategies to address challenges facing Christianity – Prelate

Fernando Ocáriz, the Prelate of Opus Dei, has disclosed that the Roman Catholic organisation of laymen and priests founded in Spain in 1928 with the aim of re-establishing Christian ideals in society is restrategising to address current challenges facing Christianity across the globe.

“We are aware of the challenges that today’s society presents everywhere to the life and spread of Christianity. We all have more or less experience of situations that make the apostolate in some places more arduous.

“The faithful of the Prelature, at a personal level and when working with other citizens, strive to help resolve the problems of all sectors of the society they live in, doing so with a Christian spirit,” Ocáriz said in a communiqué issued at the end of the extraordinary general congress of Opus Dei convened recently in Rome.

According to Ocáriz, Opus Dei currently works in sixty-eight countries across the world with focus on providing Christian formation, offering spiritual support to Christians and non-Christians, so that each person in their respective place in society and in the Church, can promote the ideal of the universal call to holiness.

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Speaking further on some of the reasons for convening that congress, Ocáriz stated that it was to help members consider how to bring Opus Dei forward during the next hundred years. According to him, the congress provided an opportunity to rejuvenate members to recognize God’s love in their lives and bring the love to others, especially the most needy.

“This event will also be a propitious moment to consider the challenges faced by the Church and society and to reflect on how we can better contribute to help solve them. It will be a good time to look to the future,” he stated.

The Prelate also disclosed that the congress also wished to protect the charism of Opus Dei and to promote the evangelizing action carried out by its members in the world, and at the same time having to adapt the provisions relating to the Prelature to the new organization of the Roman Curia,

According to the Prelate, the centenary celebration of the Opus Dei will be a time of reflection on its identity, history and mission. The Opus Dei will mark the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of apostolic activity with women between 2 October 2028 and 14 February 2030.

The Prelate stated further that the message of Opus Dei reminds people that, in the words of the Second Vatican Council, “all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations [and] the ordinary circumstances of family and social life”.

Therefore, the Prelature of Opus Dei contributes to the development of these social initiatives, providing pastoral assistance and Christian guidance, always fully respecting freedom of consciences.