Speaking to Catholic priests, religious, and church workers in Kazakhstan on September 15, Pope Francis reminded them that “in the Church, no one is a stranger.”

Recognizing that many of the pastoral workers in Kazakhstan today are from other countries, the Pope encouraged them to put the history of the Church and the work of evangelization in proper perspective. He told them that “the faith was not passed down from generation to generation as a set of ideas to be understood and followed, as a fixed and timeless code.”

Instead of being “bogged down in the same old way of doing things,” the Pope said, evangelists should form a “community open to God’s future.”