Theologians as prophets

In his address to theologians in Argentina, Pope Francis said this:

The theologian is a prophet. One of the great challenges posed in the contemporary world is not only the ease with which one can do without God, but, socially, a further step has been taken. The present crisis is centered on the inability of persons to believe in anything beyond themselves. The individual conscience has become the measure of all things. This generates a fissure in personal and social identities. This new reality causes a whole process of alienation due to the lack of a past and therefore of a future. That is why the theologian is a prophet, because he keeps alive the awareness of the past and the invitation that comes from the future. He is the man able to criticize every alienating way because he intuits, he reflects in the river of the Tradition that he received from the Church, the hope to which we are called. And from that perspective he invites to awaken the slumbering conscience. He is not the man who conforms, who gets accustomed. On the contrary, he is the man who is attentive to all that can harm and destroy his own.