CNS photo/Paul Haring

ROME (CNS)—Meeting more than 50,000 Catholic charismatics in Rome’s Olympic Stadium, Pope Francis admitted he was not always comfortable with the way they prayed, but he knelt onstage as they prayed for him and over him by singing and speaking in tongues.

“In the early years of the charismatic renewal in Buenos Aires, I did not have much love for charismatics,” the pope said June 1. “I said of them: They seem like a samba school.”

Little by little, though, he came to see how much good the movement was doing for Catholics and for the church, he told a gathering organized by the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services and the Catholic Fraternity of Charismatic Covenant Communities and Fellowships.

Pope Francis invited the crowd, which included charismatics from 55 countries, to come to St. Peter’s Square for Pentecost in 2017 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the movement. The Catholic charismatic movement traces its origins to a retreat held in 1967 with students and staff from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

“I expected all of you, charismatics from around the world, to celebrate your great jubilee with the pope at Pentecost 2017 in St. Peter’s Square,” the pope said.

The celebration in Rome’s Olympic Stadium began with the song, “Vive Jesus, El Senor,” (“Jesus, the Lord, Lives”) a Spanish-language song which Pope Francis joined in singing with his hands open like many in the crowd. The pope said he likes the song, which charismatics in Argentina also sing.

At another point, when the crowd prayed that the Holy Spirit would fill Pope Francis, he knelt on the bare floor of the stage, while they sang with their hands raised toward him. After the song, many in the crowd kept their hands raised as they prayed in tongues, speaking in unfamiliar languages.

Pope Francis told the charismatics that their movement was begun by the Holy Spirit as “a current of grace in the church and for the church.”

He pleaded with charismatic groups not to try to organize everything or create a bureaucracy that attempts to tame the Holy Spirit.

The temptation “to become ‘controllers’ of the grace of God” is a danger, the pope said. Group leaders, sometimes without even meaning to, become “administrators of grace,” deciding who should exercise which gifts of the Holy Spirit. “Don’t do this anymore,” Pope Francis said. “Be dispensers of God’s grace, not controllers. Don’t be the Holy Spirit’s customs agents.”

From the beginning, he said, charismatics were known for their love of and familiarity with the Scriptures; the pope asked those who lost the habit of carrying their Bible with them everywhere to “return to this first love, always have the word of God in your pocket or purse.”

Pope Francis also said Catholic charismatics have a special role to play in healing divisions among Christians by praying with members of other Christian churches and communities who share a belief in Jesus as lord and savior.