>> As Pope Francis has said in a very recent homily, “it is not possible to find Jesus outside the Catholic Church”.
Did he say “Roman Catholic Church” or did he say “catholic church”?
The Catholic Church is a group of Churches including the Latin Rite Church (Western Church) (Roman Catholic) 1.2 billion members. There are 22 other autonomous particular churches,(Eastern Rite Churches) They include:
Byzantine Tradition
Melkite Church
Ruthenian Catholic Church
Romanian Catholic Church
Italo-Albanian Catholic Church
Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church
Belarusian Greek Catholic Church
Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
Croatian Greek Catholic Church
Greek Byzantine Catholic Church
Hungarian Greek Catholic Church
Macedonian Greek Catholic Church
Russian Catholic Church
Slovak Greek
Antiochian or West Syrian Tradition
Maronite Church
Syriac Catholic Church
Syro-Malankara Catholic Church
Chaldean or East Syrian Tradition
Chaldean Church
Syro-Malabar Catholic Church
Armenian Tradition
Armenian Catholic Church
Alexandrian Tradition
Coptic Catholic Church
Ethiopian Catholic Church
All are aligned with Rome and consider the Bishop of Rome as the Seat of Peter and the Representative of Christ on Earth, yet they have their own traditions. They constitute millions of members.
The Catholic Church is working diligently on bringing both the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX)AND many Anglican Churches back into alignment with the Church.
The goal of ALL Churches should be the saving of souls, not the salving of a sinners conscience or the legitimizing of their sin. Without Moral absolutes, there are truly no morals at all.
Francis I SHOULD proclaim that only through the Catholic Church can a person truly come to Christ. He would be remiss in his requirement that he evangelize if he did not.
Actually, he simply said “Church”, but the Catholic Church has always (up until Vatican II) taught that there is only one Church, the Catholic Church.