Evangelii Gaudium §124

124. The Aparecida Document describes the riches which the Holy Spirit pours forth in popular piety by his gratuitous initiative. On that beloved continent, where many Christians express their faith through popular piety, the bishops also refer to it as “popular spirituality” or “the people’s mysticism”.[103] It is truly “a spirituality incarnated in the culture of the lowly”.[104] Nor is it devoid of content; rather it discovers and expresses that content more by way of symbols than by discursive reasoning, and in the act of faith greater accent is placed on credere in Deum than on credere Deum.[105] It is “a legitimate way of living the faith, a way of feeling part of the Church and a manner of being missionaries”;[106] it brings with itself the grace of being a missionary, of coming out of oneself and setting out on pilgrimage: “Journeying together to shrines and taking part in other manifestations of popular piety, also by taking one’s children or inviting others, is in itself an evangelizing gesture”.[107] Let us not stifle or presume to control this missionary power!

[103] Fifth General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops, Aparecida Document, 29 June 2007, 262.

[104] Ibid., 263.

[105] Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, S. Th., II-II, q. 2, a. 2.

[106] Fifth General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops, Aparecida Document, 29 June 2007, 264.

[107] Ibid.