Speaking to priests in Quebec on Thursday evening, July 28, Pope Francis said that “secularization represents a challenge for our pastoral imagination.”

The Pope told the clerics gathered at the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris that they should not respond to the challenges of secularization with a purely negative attitude, but should make distinctions between what is healthy and what is dangerous in secular attitudes.

The Pope urged the priests to avoid “nostalgia for a sacralized world, a bygone society in which the Church and her ministers had greater power and social relevance.” Instead, he told them, they must strive to communicate the joy that comes from the acceptance of the Gospel.