“You cannot give general directives to organize the people of God in public life”, says Pope Francis in a letter, signed on 19th of March, to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, President of the Pontifical Council for Latin America, following his meeting, on 4 March, with the participants in the Plenary Assembly of the body on the theme “The indispensable commitment of the lay faithful in the public life” of Latin American countries. “Very often – the Pope writes – we have given in to the temptation to think that the committed layperson is one who is engaged in the works of the Church and/or in issues of the parish or diocese, and we have reflected little on how to accompany a baptised person in his or her daily public life; on how laypeople, in their daily activities, with their responsibilities, can be committed Christians in public life. Without realising it, we have generated a lay élite, believing that committed laypeople are only those who work in ‘priests’ matters’, and we have forgotten and neglected the believer who very often exhausts his or her hope in the daily struggle to live the faith. Clericalism cannot see these situations because it is more concerned with dominating spaces than generating processes”. As Pope Francis observes, “we must acknowledge that laypeople have their reality, their identity. And since they are immersed in the heart of social, public and political life, and participate in always new cultural forms, they need new forms of organization and celebration of their faith”. According to the Pontiff, “it is illogical, even impossible, to think that we as pastors should have a monopoly on the solutions to the many challenges that contemporary life presents to us. On the contrary, we must stay on the side of our people, accompanying them in their searches and stimulating that imagination capable of responding to the current problems. This means discerning with our people and never for our people, or without our people. That is, on a case-to-case basis”.