Vocation and Mission of Women
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10 May 1990
Assisi, Italy

Your President, Signora Dilde Grandi, has very kindly invited me to greet you at the opening of your Assembly (International Association of Ladies of Charity--AIC). I am very grateful to her and to the members of the executive committee, for this opportunity of expressing in the name of the whole Vincentian family my good wishes to all of you and to assure you that, during these days of your Assembly, you will have a special place in my prayers.

In inviting me to greet you this morning, I see in your President's gesture an expression of her desire to bring you back to your origins as an Association or Confraternity of Charity. The genius and the holiness, the vision and the practical sense of St. Vincent de Paul must always be allowed to permeate your policies and your programs. In doing so you will be assured, not only of his patronage and intercession, but also of continued success in meeting some of the needs of the poor, who turn to you daily for direction and collaboration in their efforts to rise above their conditions of poverty.

Since your last General Assembly, Pope John Paul II has given to the world two documents which have much significance for the Church. They are two documents which directly or indirectly will influence the deliberations of your Assembly. I refer to the Apostolic Letter, Mulieris Dignitatem, on the dignity and vocation of women, and the Apostolic Exhortation, Christifideles Laici, on the vocation and the mission of the lay faithful in the Church and in the world.

In his letter on the dignity and vocation of women, the Pope, treating of how, throughout Christian history, women have contributed notably to the apostolic mission of the Church, evokes "Monica, the mother of Augustine, Macrina, Olga of Kiev, Matilda of Tuscany, Hedwig of Silesia, Jadwiga of Cracow, Elizabeth of Thuringia, Birgitta of Sweden, Joan of Arc, Rose of Lima, Elizabeth Ann Seton and Mary Ward." (p27). Clearly, thousands of other women could be added to that list. What, however, might merit mention in this context--and certainly deserves further study--is the gift which St. Vincent de Paul had of placing a high degree of confidence in Christian women for the realization of a variety of projects, which he judged would be carried through and sustained more effectively by women than by men. Vincent de Paul had an unusual degree of insight into the spiritual energies that lay hidden in the feminine soul. Moreover, he had the gift of releasing those energies and channeling them into what was the passion of his life, namely, the poor and the suffering members of the Body of Christ. In that way St. Vincent de Paul opened up for the women of his day new vistas of apostolic action, so that they were no longer confined to the option of either the cloister or the hearth. (cf. M. Marocchi, in Actes du Colloque International d'Etudes Vincentiennes, ed. Vincentiana, Roma 1983, p. 41). There is something of the challenge of the prophet in what St. Vincent said to your predecessors on 11 July 1657. "It is eight hundred years or so since women have not had some public office in the Church. They had it previously and they were called deaconesses...but around the time of Charlemagne, by a secret disposition of Divine Providence, this ceased, and your sex was deprived of all office....And now this same Providence addresses itself to some of you today to supply what is lacking to the sick poor of the Hotel Dieu. They are responding to this plan....These good souls have responded by the grace of God to these designs with ardor and constancy." (Coste XIII, Fr. ed., p. 810).

Your Founder, then, must be seen as a herald, in some degree, of the riches which the Church in our day is now drawing forth from her treasury on the vocation of women in the world.

Your reflections during this Assembly will also be made in the light of the document on the laity, Christifideles Laici. In that document the Pope gives much attention to the vocation and mission of women in the Church and the world. I see your Assembly as a challenge to finding ever more effective means of enhancing the dignity of the poor, of securing greater justice for them and of serving them. There is an external challenge, and there is also an internal one for you as members of this Assembly. In his forceful appeal to the developed nations of the northern hemisphere on the 29 January this year, the Pope observed that: "Justice makes more progress when a spirit of understanding prevails and each person gives of his or her best." (Address at Ouagadougou, 29 Jan. 1990).

With a spirit of mutual understanding prevailing in this Assembly, and with each delegate offering her best to the discussions, the cause of justice in the world will be effectively, if not dramatically, advanced. In the words of the Holy Father: "As a person with a truly unique life story, each is called by name, to make a special contribution to the coming of the Kingdom of God. No talent, no matter how small, is to be hidden or left unused." (Christifideles Laici, p56).

My hope and prayer is that in the treasury of experience, of spiritual gifts, of practical expertise, that is represented in this Assembly, no talent, no matter how small, may be left hidden or unused. "Such is your office, Ladies, such is your portion," exclaimed St. Vincent. "Let us grasp the feet of Our Lord and pray Him to pour forth more and more life, energy and warmth into your spirit so that you may continue to the end that which you have begun." (Coste, XII, Fr. ed., p. 815).

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