ADDRESSES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES

Here is a translation of the Holy Father's address to the General Assembly of Italian bishops on 5/24/07.

Dear brother Italian Bishops,

On the occasion of your 57th General Assembly, we have a new and happy opportunity today to be together and live a moment of intense communion.

I greet your new President, Mons. Angelo Bagnasco, and thank him for the kind words he addressed to me in your name. I renew my expressions of gratitude to Cardinal Camillo Ruini who served your conference for so many years as President. And I greet the three vice-presidents and the secretary-general.

I greet each of you affectionately, reliving the sentiments of friendship and communion that I personally experienced during your ad-limina visits.

For me, the encounters with all the pastors of the Church in Italy have been a most beautiful memory. That way, I learned what we might call the 'exterior' geography of Italy but above all its spiritual geography. I was truly able to enter intimately into the life of the Church, where there is still so much wealth and vitality of faith; where, in this difficult time when we do not lack for problems, one can still see the power of faith profoundly at work in the souls of the faithful; and that even where the faith appears extinguishes, a small flame remains and we can revive it.

It is precisely about the ad-limina visits which you have all completed in the past few months that I wish to speak to you, because they were for me a great comfort and an experience of joy, as an occasion to know you better personally as well as your dioceses, and to share with you the satisfactions and the concerns which accompany pastoral care.

All these encounters with you have confirmed my certainty that in Italy, the faith is alive and profoundly rooted, and that the Church is a reality for the people, one that relates closely to persons and families in specific particular ways.

Doubtless there are different situations in a country that is so rich in history, including religious history, and that is characterized by a manifold heritage as well as different conditions of life, work and income. But the Catholic faith and the presence of the Church remain as the great unifying factor for this beloved nation and a valuable deposit of moral energies for its future.

Naturally these comforting positive realities will not make us ignore or under-estimate the difficulties that are present and the hidden traps that could grow with the passage of time and of generations. We can observe everyday, in the images offered in public discourse and amplified by mass communications - but also, if to a different degree, in the life and behavior of individuals - the weight of a culture marked by moral relativism, poor in certainties but rich in claims that are often unjustified.

We also note the need for a strengthening of Christian formation through a more substantial catechesis, for which the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church could be of great service.

But we also need the constant commitment to place God ever more in the center of the life of our communities, giving primacy to prayer, to personal friendship with Jesus, and therefore, to his call for holiness.

In particular, we must have great concern for the vocation of priesthood and the consecrated life, as well as for the permanent formation and the conditions in which our priests live and work. Especially in some regions, the low number of young priests is already a serious problem for pastoral work.

Together with the whole Christian community, let us ask the Lord, trustingly and humbly, for the gift of new and holy laborers for his harvest (cfr Mt 9,37-38). We know that sometimes the Lord makes us wait, but we also know that whoever knocks at his door does not knock in vain. Therefore, let us continue, with trust and patience, to pray that the Lord may give us these new and holy 'laborers'.

Dear brother bishops, shortly before the start of your ad-limina visits, these topics were taken up at the convention which assembled the Italian Church in Verona last October. I keep a great and grateful memory of the day that I spent with you on that occasion, and I am happy at the results of the Convention that have since matured.

Basically, we now have to go ahead in order to make ever more effective and concrete that great Yes which God, in Jesus Christ, gave to man, to his life, to human love, to our freedom and our intelligence. The very sense of that Convention is summarized in that Yes.

To start from that fact and to make it perceptible to all - namely, that Christianity is a great Yes, a Yes from God himself and concretized in the Incarnation of the Son - seems to me very important. Only if we situate our Christian existence within that Yes, if we penetrate profoundly the joy of that Yes, is it possible to realize Christian living in every aspect of our existence, even in those aspects that are difficult for Christians today.

I am therefore happy that your Assembly has approved the pastoral note which summarizes and restates the fruits of the work done at the Convention. It is very important that the hope in the Risen Christ, that spirit of communion and that willingness for missionary testimony, continue to nourish the life and the multi-form task of the Church in Italy.

The principal theme of your Assembly links closely to the objectives of the Convention in Verona. You have been reflecting on 'Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world: the Church in mission, ad gentes and among us'.

This way, you are addressing - from a perspective of directed evangelization which is ultimately unitary because it always involves announcing and bearing witness to Jesus Christ - those who are opening up to the faith for the first time, the children of those peoples who now come to live and work in Italy, and our own people, some of whom have strayed far from the faith and are subject to the pressures of those secularizing tendencies which would dominate the society and culture of this nation as well as all of Europe.

To all of them and to each one must be addressed the mission of the Church and our concerns as pastors, as I think I must remind you in this 50th anniversary year of Pius XII's encyclical Fidei donum.

I am happy that you have placed as the basis of your missionary effort the fundamental truth that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the world: the certainty of this truth was, from the beginning, the decisive impulse for the Christian mission.

Even today, as the declaration Dominus Iesus affirmed, we should have full awareness that from the mystery of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, living and present in the Church, comes the uniqueness and the redeeming universality of Christian revelation, and therefore, the irrenounceable task of announcing to all, without tiring or giving up, the same Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn 14,16).

It seems to me that if we look at the panorama of the world situation today, one can understand - humanly, almost without recourse to faith, I would say - that the God who took on a human face, the God who became flesh, who has the name of Jesus Christ and who suffered for us, that this God is needed by everyone, that He is the only answer to all the challenges of our time.

The regard and respect towards other religions and cultures, with the seeds of truth and goodness present in them and which represent a preparation for the Gospel, are particularly necessary today, in a world that is becoming more 'together.' But that cannot diminish our awareness of the originality, fullness and uniqueness of the revelation of the true God who was definitively given to us in Christ, nor can it attenuate or weaken the missionary vocation of the Church.

The relativistic cultural climate which surrounds us makes it ever more important and urgent to implant and mature in the whole ecclesial body the certainty that Christ, God with the human face, is our true and only Savior. The book JESUS OF NAZARETH - a very personal book, not of the Pope, but of this man, myself - was written with that intention: that we may once again, with the heart and with reason, see that Christ is really Him whom the human heart awaits.

Dear brothers, as Italian bishops you have a precise responsibility not only towards the Churches entrusted to you but also to the entire nation. In full and cordial respect of the distinction between Church and politics, between that which is Caesar's and that which is God's (cfr Mt 22,21), we cannot not concern ourselves with what is good for man, creature and image of God, and concretely, with the common good of Italy.

You gave clear testimony of your attention to the common good with the pastoral note approved by your Permanent Council regarding the family based on matrimony and the legislative initiatives regarding de facto unions, moving in full consonance with the constant teaching of the Apostolic See.

In this context, the recent demonstration in support of the family, carried out at the initiative of Catholic laity but also shared by many non-Catholics, was a great and extraordinary feast of the people, which confirmed how the family itself is profoundly rooted in the heart and the life of the Italian people.

This event certainly contributed to make visible to all the significance and the role of the family in society which must be understood and acknowledged today, in the face of a culture which deludes itself in promoting individual happiness by insisting unilaterally on individual freedom. That is why every initiative of the State in favor of the family as such can only be appreciated and encouraged.

The same attention to the true needs of people is expressed in daily service to the many kinds of poverty, old and new, visible or hidden. It is a service in which so many church agencies - starting with your dioceses, the parishes, Caritas and many other volunteer organizations - have been doing the best they can.

You must persist, dear brother bishops, in promoting and inspiring this service, so that the true love of Christ may shine through it and everyone may palpably sense that there is no separation whatsoever between the Church that is the custodian of moral law, inscribed by God in the hearts of man, and the Church that invites the faithful to be good Samaritans who recognize their neighbor in every suffering person.

I wish, finally, to remind you of the appointment that will bring us all together again in Loreto, at the start of September, for the pilgrimage and encounter that is called the 'Agora of Italian youth', which is intended to place our youth more profoundly within the path of the Church after the Verona convention and to prepare them for World Youth Day of Youth next year in Sydney.

We all know that the Christian formation of the new generations is probably the most difficult task - but supremely important - that faces the Church. Therefore, let us go to Loreto with our young people, and may the Virgin Mary help them to love Christ ever more, to be within a Church they trust, and to communicate to their brothers the joy of being loved by God.

Dearest bishops of Italy, in the exercise of our ministry we will encounter today as always, not a few difficulties, but also abundant consolations from the Lord, if only through the testimony of affection from our people. Let us thank God for all these, and proceed along our way, fortified by the communion which unites us and which we experienced again today.

In this spirit, I assure you of my prayers for yourselves, your Churches and Italy, and from the heart, I impart the Apostolic Blessing to all of you and your faithful.