Pope Francis has invited thousands of Catholic "charismatics" and members of Pentecostal and Evangelical churches to Rome to celebrate Pentecost and mark the 50th anniversary of the so-called Catholic Charismatic Renewal.
Francis, who has a history of participating in charismatic-interfaith events, will lead a prayer vigil on June 3, the eve of Pentecost, at Rome's Circus Maximus, and will offer Pentecost Mass the next morning in St. Peter's Square.
The question is raised as to why Francis would entertain a sect that is manifestly errant and which the Church has already spoken against. In May 1969, Pope Paul VI publicly denounced "the illusion of a free and charismatic Christianity" which ''does not build, but demolishes," and deplored those who "have recourse to gratuitous charismatic suppositions in order to fill up the interior emptiness created by their own loss of confidence in the guidance of the Church."
