49 The laymen of mission countries exert their most direct and effective influence in the field of public activity, and it is necessary that Christian communities take urgent, timely measures to bring laymen into the public life of their countries for the common good—men who not only acquit themselves creditably in their professions and trades, but are also an asset to the Church which re-created them in her grace. Thus may their pastors praise them with the words which we read in the writings of St. Basil: "I thanked the Most Holy God for the fact that, even though busily attending to public affairs, you did not neglect the interests of the Church: on the contrary, each one of you has been solicitous of her affairs just as though they had been your own private affairs, and, indeed, as though your life depended on it." (82)
Source: Princeps Pastorum (Vatican.va)