The missionary pneumatology of Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium

The Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (EG), by Pope Francis, devotes special attention to the spirit of evangelization, the Holy Spirit, the soul of the evangelizing Church" (EG 261), which invites us to a pneumatological reading of this Exhortation in order to analyze the pneumatological elements referred to in his the notion of evangelization by examining, in missionary perspective, his explicit and implicit occurrences therein. The last chapter of EG, eminently pneumatological, leads us to the return to his text from a pneumatological-trinitarian consideration. The primacy of the Holy Spirit in evangelization is associated with the need for an authentic and docile openness of the evangelizers to the action of the same Spirit. Faithful to the mandate of Jesus, the Church seeks to proclaim the Gospel by conforming to it, through the action of the Holy Spirit, so that evangelization does not spare the witness of life. Christ was anointed by the Spirit to announce the Good News (Lk 4, 18). So too the Church at Pentecost was impelled to evangelize in the force and power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). The Spirit of evangelization in EG, therefore, expresses a missionary pneumatology whose elements explain the nexuses between the Holy Spirit, the Church and the mission.