ROME (CNA) - The president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, said this week that faced with the “tired and discouraged Christianity” of so many Catholics, the new ecclesial movements and communities “are a challenge to live the faith with joy and enthusiasm” and to propose “a great missionary passion for the fallen-away and for the new areopagos of modern culture.”

The cardinal made his comments during an interview with Vatican Radio in the city of Rocca di Papa where bishops from around the world are attending a seminar on the new movements and meeting with their founders and leaders.

He recalled that Pope Benedict XVI has called on the Church’s pastors to welcome and embrace the new charisms as part of the God’s salvific plan.

Both for the current Pope and Pope John Paul II, he said, the new movements constitute “a providential gift for our times and a great sign of hope for the Church and for humanity.”

Cardinal Rylko said that during the seminar, the bishops hoped to “understand together the ecclesial and theological force of this phenomenon which never ceases to amaze many because of the fruit it bears in the lives of so many of the laity—men and women—in the Church of our time: fruit of extraordinary missionary strength and holiness of life.”

“We will also reflect on what our pastoral response to this gift should be: how to welcome it in the local churches, in parishes, so that we don’t waste this extraordinary spiritual resource that the Holy Spirit offers us,” the cardinal said.

During the opening Mass of the seminar, Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, stressed that the Church’s pastors need to know how to guide the new movements. “And they will be able to do so if they let themselves be guided docilely by the Holy Spirit,” he said.