Pope's ambassador calls American church a (paradox,' self-referential

Abstract

ROME - The Catholic Church in the United States is grappling with a tendency to become more "auto-referential" and withdraw itself from the international stage and universal church, Pope Francis' representative to the United States said. " "The pope feels that if we don't work together, we are not a church," he stressed. In his homily, Pierre recalled how as a seminarian he initially thought his vocation was to remain a pastor in the diocese of his native Rennes, France, but that after almost 50 years of traveling the world in diplomatic service "the pope called me to give me a parish, the parish I never had."