NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

OOPS! Page change in the middle of the news-day!


THE POPE ON VACATION, LORENZAGO DI CADORE, JULY 9-27




The Pope led noontime Angelus prayers today
at Castello Mirabello in Lorenzago.




On the previous page, here is what we posted today, 7/15/07:

The Pope greets incoming Israeli President - AP story on Pope's message to Shimon Peres.

News update from Lorenzago - Interview with Bishop of Treviso about his impressions of Benedict. Account of
the Pope's audience yesterday for town officials of Lorenzago, all who worked on preparing for his visit, and
their families. Translated.

Mass MP and CDF document reinforce the message of Vatican-II - Radio Vatican interviews Mons. Bruno Forte
of Chieti-Vasto. Translated.

Fr. Lombardi confirms Papal trips to Lourdes and UN in 2008 but dates not yet fixed - Part of a wide-ranging
news conference in Lorenzago after the Pope's Angelus. Translated. Photos of Angelus.

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Here's the AP account from Lorenzago today:


Pope to visit U.N., Australia in 2008
By NICOLE WINFIELD



LORENZAGO DI CADORE, July 15 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI is planning numerous trips abroad in the coming year to the United Nations, Australia, Austria and a shrine in Lourdes, France, the Vatican spokesman said Sunday.

In addition, the archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, has invited Benedict to visit Boston next year, saying it would help mend wounds from the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

The first of the pope's confirmed trips will be a Sept. 7-9 visit to Vienna where he plans to deliver an important speech to diplomats, the Rev. Federico Lombardi said, without elaborating.

He said plans were also under way for a papal trip next year to the shrine at Lourdes to mark the 150th anniversary of the apparition of the Madonna there. The trip will also be an emotional one, Lombardi said, since Pope John Paul II's last foreign trip was to Lourdes.

Millions of pilgrims have flocked to the town in the southwestern Pyrenees where an illiterate peasant girl, St. Bernadette, said she had visions of a white-clad Virgin Mary in 1858.

Lombardi said Benedict plans to travel to the U.N. headquarters in New York next year, though no date has been set.

Lombardi spoke on Italian state television as Benedict emerged to bless the faithful at his secluded mountain retreat here in Italy's Dolomite mountains near the Austrian border. In his remarks, Benedict said the World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, starts next July and he urged young people "from every continent" to make the trip, which he himself hopes to make.

Benedict was interrupted several times by chants of "Benedetto" by pilgrims who had hiked up a hill to the grounds of the 19th-century Mirabello castle to hear him speak. Benedict has been staying at a nearby refurbished chalet.

The Rev. Giuseppe Bratti, spokesman for the diocese, has said the pope has been keeping a "monastic" schedule during his retreat  writing, praying and reading in the morning and taking a walk each evening  often to a nearby shrine to pray.

This is the first summer Benedict has spent in Lorenzago since he was elected to the papacy in 2005; the previous two years he has spent time at a mountain retreat in Valle d'Aosta, on Italy's western border with France.

Benedict said as he arrived in Lorenzago on Monday that he hoped to start writing the second volume of his book Jesus of Nazareth. He also said he would begin writing an encyclical, which Lombardi said would be based on a "social theme." Media reports have suggested it would cover issues of globalization.

Benedict's only other encyclical Deus caritas est was a meditation on love and charity.

Benedict plans to stay in Lorenzago until July 27, when he moves to the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo, in the hills south of Rome.


Strangely, Reuters limited itself to covering the Pope's Angelus homily and has not reported on Fr. Lombardi's news conference.

Get closer to God during vacation, Pope says



LORENZAGO DI CADORE, July 15 (Reuters) - Vacation should be a time for Christians not only to relax but to get closer to God, Pope Benedict said on Sunday from his mountain retreat in the Italian Dolomites.

"Every good Christian knows that vacation is the time to rest the body but also to nurture the spirit through more time for prayer and meditation, to grow in one's personal relationship with Christ and follow his teachings ever more closely," he said.

The 80-year-old Pope was speaking at his regular Sunday blessing amid the tall pines surrounding a church-owned estate in the Dolomite mountains north of Venice where he is on a three-week private retreat.

"Amid this sight of fields, woods, and peaks pointing to the sky, the desire to praise God for the wonders of his works rises spontaneously in the soul and our admiration for this natural beauty is easily transformed into prayer," he said.

Benedict is only the second pope in modern history to take private holidays outside the Vatican or the papal summer residence south of Rome, a tradition started by his predecessor John Paul 20 years ago.

Benedict has been taking short evening walks and spending much of his time reading, listening to music, playing the piano, and is believed to be in the initial stages of writing a new encyclical, the highest form of papal writing.

In his address on Sunday the Pope also asked young people to begin preparing for next year's World Day of Youth, which will take place in Sydney, Australia in July, 2008.