“I’m scheduled to give five presentations at World Youth Day in Lisbon, and I would like to assure Bishop Aguiar that every single one of them is designed to evangelize,” Bishop Robert Barron said in response to Cardinal-designate Américo Alves Aguiar’s statement that “we don’t want to convert the young people to Christ” at World Youth Day.
The Church “most certainly does maintain that evangelization is its central, pivotal, most defining work,” Bishop Barron added. “When any Catholic institution, ministry, or outreach forgets its evangelical purpose, it has lost its soul.”