Free Republic

Pope Francis to Slovakian Catholics: We Need ‘Creativity of the Gospel,’ Not ‘A Defensive Catholicism’Slovakian bishops, priests, religious, seminarians, and catechists listened on headsets to a live translation of the speech, which the Pope delivered in Italian, frequently stopping for off-the-cuff remarks on everything from the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky to the importance of short homilies.BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Pope Francis told Slovakia’s Catholics on Monday that the Church should respond to secularization with the “creativity of the Gospel,” not “a defensive Catholicism.” Speaking to clergy and lay people in St Martin’s Cathedral in the capital, Bratislava, on Sept. 13,...