On July 7th, the new Patriarch of Lisbon, Msgr. Manuel José Macario do Nascimento Clemente, took possession of his seat. Msgr. Clemente, who is also Vice President of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, was appointed by Pope Francis on May 18th to be the successor of Card. José da Cruz Policarpo, who has retired from the pastoral governance for reason of age.
In his homily at the Mass celebrated in the Jeronimos Monastery, the prelate put emphasis on his pastoral program in relation to the communitarian dimension of every Christian’s mission. “We must be a welcoming and missionary community,” said the new Patriarch. “When speaking about the Church, we talk about a community, not about dispersed subjectivisms. Jesus teaches us that, in God, unity is communion.” The Gospel has “socio-cultural implications” that require a commitment on the pastoral level and in the life of the community, in which Christians are invited to participate as active subjects, especially “in defense of the dignity of the human person, with the wealth of the races and peoples.” Msgr. Clemente then reiterated the Christian truth concerning the family “from conception to natural death, the complementarity between man and woman, in the generation and education of children as well as in the mutual assistance of the young and the elderly.”
