This is an event which, along with its legal significance, affected the vivid ecclesial sense of the believer Pedro Poveda from its very core.

 

The approval of an Association that had been born in the midst of great labors and tireless dialogue between faith and action, assured him of the quality and genuine nature of his Work, of its credibility and the confirmation of a path within the Church open to the promptings of the Spirit.

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All that went far beyond the pragmatic consequences and the circumstances of such approval. The pathway of the Association had been traveled uninterruptedly as something possible within the Catholic context, but it was in need of legitimization by the authority of the Church.

 

The event widened the spirit of Pedro Poveda, a man of faith. The impulse of the Spirit worked in a concrete and tangible way in the actions of the persons and circumstances intervening in this process; the human rhythms of an adventure that went beyond the human; the rhythms of faith and passionate care. The heart of this man of God rested in seeing that his Work was now, beyond question, a Work of the Church.

 

The fact places us before a vision of enormous transcendence for the associative life of the Church and the development of the laity.

 

A lay association is welcomed by the Church, receiving some particular traits previously unforeseen. With it, a new path is opened, a new paradigm, a new way of dialoguing with the world, making possible the immersion of believers within the structures of society. Humbled and grateful, we could even say that the event touches the history of the Church. The meaning of this fact, contemplated after a century, sends us back to the development of the laity, shored up by the affirmations of Vatican II, but preceded by experiences like Poveda´s, which opened up the avenues for that awareness and realization.

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Today we can speak of a heightened sensitivity, of a time of indisputable progress and of an urgent challenge for the life of the Church.

 

The pontifical approval of the Teresian Association as an association of lay faithful transcends the association itself. The Church welcomed the new seeds of life and evangelization that pointed to it with joyful benevolence.

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