ADDRESSES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES

Here is a translation of the address delivered by the Holy Father to the plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace on Thursday, Jan. 31.


Lord Cardinals,
Venerated brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood,
Dearest faithful co-workers:


It is a great joy for me to meet you on the occasion of your Plenary Session. I can thus convey to you my profound recognition and heartfelt appreciation for the work which your Dicastery does in the service of ministering to unity, which is entrusted in a special way to the Roman Pontiff. It is a ministry that is primarily expressed as a function of the unity of the faith, resting on the 'sacred deposit' of which the Successor of Peter is the first custodian and defender (cfr Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus, 11).

I thank Cardinal William Levada for the sentiments which he expressed, in the name of all, in his address, and for his reference to the themes that have been the object of some Documents from your Congregation in the past few years, and of the matters that still require the scrutiny of the Dicastery.

In particular, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published two important Documents last year, which offered some doctrinal clarifications on essential aspects of the doctrine on the Church and on Evangelization.

They are clarifications necessary for in order to correctly carry out the ecumenical dialog and the dialog with the religions and cultures of the world.

The first Document is entitled "Answers and questions on some aspects of the doctrine of the Church" and re-proposes in its formulations and language the teaching of the Second Vatican Council in full continuity with the doctrine of Catholic tradition.

It confirmed that the one and only Church of Christ has its subsistence, permanence and stability in the Catholic Church, and that because of this, the unity, indivisibility and indestructibility of the Church of Christ is not nullified by the separations and divisions among Christians.

Alongside this fundamental doctrinal clarification, the Document also re-proposes the correct linguistic use of certain ecclesiological expressions which risk being misunderstood, and calls attention, for this purpose, to the difference which continues among the various Christian confessions in their understanding of what it means to be a Church, in the proper theological sense.

This, far from hindering authentic ecumenical commitment, will be a stimulus so that the confrontation on doctrinal questions should always take place with realism and full awareness of the aspects that still separate the Christian confessions, beyond which may come the joyous acknowledgment of a commonly professed faith and the need pf praying incessantly for a more diligent path towards increasing and ultimately full unity among Christians.

To cultivate a theological vision which retains the unity and identity of the Church as gifts 'hidden in Christ', with the consequence that historically, the Church exists in fact in mutiple ecclesial configurations, which are reconcilable only in the eschatological perspective, can only generate a slowing down and ultimately, the paralysis of ecumenism itself.

The affirmation by the Second Vatican Council that the true Church of Christ 'subsists in the Catholic Church' (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 6) does not concern only its relationship with the Christian churches and ecclesial communities, but also extends to defining its relationship with the religions and cultures of the world.

The same Council, in the Declaration Dignitatis humanae on religious liberty, affirms that "this only true religion subsists in the Cahtolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus entrusted the mission of spreading it to all men" (No. 1).

The "Doctrinal note on some aspects of evangelization" - the other Document published by your Congregation in December 2007 - in the face of a persistent religious and cultural relativism, reiterates that the Church, in a time of dialog among religions and cultures, does not exempt itself from the need for evangelization and missionary activity towards all people, nor will it cease to ask men to welcome the salvation that is offered to all peoples.

The recognition of elements of truth and goodness in the religions of the world and the seriousness of their religious efforts, as well as the colloquium and spirit of collaboration with them for the defense and promotion of human dignity and universal moral values, cannot be understood as a limitation to the missionary task of the Church, which commits it to incessantly announce Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life (cfr Jn 14,6).

I also invite you, dearest ones, to follow with particular attention the difficult and complex problems of bioethics. The new biomedical technologies, in fact, are of interest not only to doctors and specialized researchers, but are disseminated through modern means of social communications, provoking expectations and questions in vaster sectors of society.

The Magisterium of the Church certainly cannot and should not intervene in every novelty in science, but it has the task of reiterating the great values in play and to propose to the faithful and to all men of good will ethico-moral principles and orientations with respect to new important questions.

The two fundamental criteria for moral discernment in this field are 1) the unconditional respect for the human being as a person, from his conception up to natural death, and b) respect for the originality of the transmission of life through conjugal acts proper to spouses.

After the publication in 1973 of the Instruction Donum vitae, which enunciated such criteria, many criticized the Magisterium of the Church, denouncing it as if it were an obstacle to science and the true progress of mankind.

But the new problems connected, for example, with freezing human embryos, with embryonic reduction, with pre-implantation diagnosis, with embryonic stem-cell research and with attempts at human cloning, clearly show how - with extra-corporeal artificial fertilization - the barrier to protect human dignity has been breached.

When human beings, in the weakest and most defenselss state of their existence, are selected, abandoned, killed or used as mere 'biological material', how can we deny that they are no longer treated as 'someone', but as 'someething', thus placing into question the concept itself of human dignity?

Certainly, the Church appreciates and encourages the progress of biomedical sciences that open up therapeutic prospects hitherto unknown, for instance, through the use of somatic stem cells, or through therapies addressed to the restitution of fertility, or to the cure of genetic diseases.

At the same time, it feels the need to enlighten the conscience of everyone, so that scientific progress may be truly respectful of every human being, whose dignity as a person must be recognized, since he was created in the image of God.

The study of such issues, which has particularly occupied your sessions these days, will certainly contribute to promote the formation of conscience in so many of our brothers, according to what the Second Vatican Council affirmed in the Declaration Dignitatis humanae: "Christians... in the formation of their conscience should diligently consider the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church. In fact, by the will of Christ, the Catholic Church is the teacher of truth, and its task is to announce and teach in authentic manner the truth which is Christ, and at the same time, to declare and confirm with its authority the principles of the moral order that derive from human nature itself" (No. 14).

In encouraging you to continue your demanding and important work, I express my spiritual nearness in these circumstances, and I impart from my heart to all of you, as a sign of my affection and gratitude, the Apostolic Blessing.

At 6 p.m. on Friday, the Holy Father visited the Major Seminary of
Rome, in the eve of the Feast of Our Lady of Trust, where he celebrated Vespers, and then met with the community. Here is a translation of his homily.



Lord Cardinal,
Venerated brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood,
Dear seminarians and parents,
Dear brothers and sisters:


It is always a great joy for a Bishop to find himself in his seminary, and tonight, I wish to thank the Lord who has allowed me this joy again, on the eve of the feast of Our Lady of
Trust, your heavenly Patroness.

I salute you all from the heart: the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishops, the Rector and other superiors, and with special affection, you, my dear seminarians.

I am also happy to greet the parents present and all the friends of the seminary. We are gathered together for the first solemn Vespers of this Marian feast that is so dear to you.

We just heard some verses from the Letter of St. Paul to the Galatians, in which the expression "the fullness of time" (4,4) is found. Only God can 'fill time' and make us experience a sense of fulfillment about our existence.

God filled time with himself, by sending his Only Son, in whom he has made us his adopted children: children in the Son. In Jesus and with Jesus, "the Way, the Truth and the Life" (Jn 14,6), we are now capable of finding the exhaustive answers to the most profound expectations of our heart. With fear gone, our confidence in God grows in us, so that we can dare to all him "Abba!" - Father (cfr Gal 4,6).

Dear seminarians, precisely because the light of being God's adopted children has illuminated your lives, you have felt the desire to make others take part likewise. You are here for that - to develop your filial vocation and to prepare you for your future mission as apostles of Christ.

This is a unique kind of growth, which allows you to taste the joy of life with God the Father, which makes you feel most that urgency to become messengers of the Gospel of his son Jesus. And it is the Holy Spirit which makes you attentive to this profound reality and makes you love it.

All this cannot but raise great trust in you, because the gift you have received is surprising - it fills you with wonder and intimate joy. You can therefore understand Mary's role, even in your life, Mary whom you invoke in this Seminary with the beautiful title of Our Lady of Trust. As the 'Son was born of woman' (cfr Gal 4,4), of Mary, Mother of God, so too, you as children of God have her for a Mother, a true mother.

Dear parents, probably you were the most surprised of all for what happened and what is happening with your sons. You had perhaps imagined for them a mission very different from that for which they are now being prepared.

How many times have you perhaps found yourself reflecting on them: thinking about when they were babies and then boys; the times when they showed the first signs of their vocation; or even in some cases, the years in which the life of your son appeared very remote from the Church.

What happened? What encounters influenced their choice? What interior lights oriented them on their way? How were they able to abandon perhaps promising prospects for a secular life to enter the Seminary?

Let us look to Mary. The Gospel makes us understand that even she found herself with many questions about her Son Jesus, questions that she meditated on at length (cfr Lk 2,19,51).

It is inevitable that the vocation of your sons becomes in some way the vocation of the parents as well. In seeking to understand them and following the course of their life, even you, dear Papas and mammas, often find yourselves involved in their journey, during which your own faith is strengthened and renewed.

You have found yourselves taking part in the wondrous adventure of your children. In fact, even if it seems that the life of a priest cannot possibly attract the interest of most people today, it is indeed the most interesting adventure, and one most necessary for the world - the adventure of showing and making present the fullness of life to which every man aspires.

It is a very demanding adventure - and it cannot be otherwise, because the priest is called on to imitate Jesus, "who has not come to be served, but to serve and give his life for the ransom of many" (Mt 20,28).

Dear seminarians, these years of formation constitute an important time to prepare you for the exalting mission to which the Lord has called you. Allow me to emphasize two aspects which characterize your present experience.

Above all, the seminary years bring a certain detachment from ordinary life, a certain 'desert', so that the Lord can speak to your heart (cfr Hos 2,16). His voice is not loud, but subdued - it is the voice of silence (cfr 1Kings 19,12). In order to be heard, it requires an atmosphere of silence.

For this, the Seminary offers space and time for daily prayer; it pays great attention to liturgy, meditation on the Word of God, and Eucharistic adoration. At the same time, it asks you to dedicate long hours to study. Praying and studying, you can build in yourself the man of God that you should be and which people expect a priest should be.

Then there is a second aspect of your life: During the years at Seminary, you live together - your formation in the priesthood also includes this community aspect which is of great importance.

The Apostles were 'trained' together, following Christ. Your communion with each other is not limited only to the present, but it is also for the future. The pastoral action that awaits you requires you to act together as one body, in an order - that of priests - who with the bishop, takes care of the Christian community.

Love this 'life in family', which for you, is the anticipation of that 'sacramental brotherhood' (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 8) which should characterize every diocesan priesthood.

All this reminds you that God calls on you to be saints, that holiness is the secret of true success in your priestly ministry. From now on, holiness should be the goal of every choice and decision that you make.

Entrust this desire and your daily commitment to Mary, Mother of Trust! This title that is so reassuring corresponds to the repeated Gospel invitation, "Do not fear!" which the Angel addressed to the Virgin (cfr Lk 1,39), and later many times said by Jesus to his disciples.

"Do not be afraid, because I will be with you," says the Lord. In the icon of Our Lady of Trust, where the Baby points to his Mother, Jesus seems to add: "Look at your Mother, and do not be afraid!"

Dear seminarians, follow your course in the Seminary with your spirit open to the truth, to transparency, to dialog with those who guide you, and this will allow you to respond in a simple and humble manner to Him who calls you, liberating yourself from the risk of realizing what is simply your own personal plan.

You, dear parents and friends, accompany the seminarians with your prayers and with your constant material and spiritual support. I too assure you all of remembrance in my prayers and with joy, I impart to all the Apostolic Blessing.

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Afterwards, the Holy Father met with the community of the Seminary, at the end of which he addressed them with the following words translated here:


I wish to thank your spokesman for these beautiful words and to thank you for this opportunity to be with you. I truly feel at home here where so many young men are preparing themselves to be messengers of Christ, evangelizers in this world of ours.

Today, at Vespers, I was particularly touched by the words of the psalm in which Israel thanks God for the gift of words which descend like wool. He says, You did not do this with all the rest, only to us have you given the grace of knowing your will, your plans.

The Israelites did not consider it a weight or a yoke on their shoulders to know the commandments of God, but as a great gift: in the night of the world, they knew who God is, they knew where to go, what was the road of life.

Those words mean even more for us Christians - to know that the Word of God is not just a commandment but a gift of love that was incarnated in Christ. We can truly say: thank you, Lord, because you have given us this gift of knowing you. Whoever knows you in Christ knows the living word and knows - in the dark, among all the enigmas of the world, in so many irresolvable problems - the way to follow, where we come from, what life is, what we are called to do.

I think that, right away, with this thanksgiving for the gift of knowing God incarnate, the idea should also come that I should communicate this to others - even they are seeking, even they want to live well, even they have the thirst to find the right way but have not found it.

Thus it is both a grace and an obligation to know Jesus - to have the grace to be called by him precisely so that we may help others, so that they too may thank God with joy because they have received the grace of knowing 'who I am, where I come from, where I am going'.

Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady of Trust, trusted completely in the Lord with great courage. Priesthood, as I said in the homily, is an adventure in today's world, where it meets so much opposition, so much rejection of the faith. It is an adventure but a most beautiful one, because in the depth of each heart is a thirst for God.

These days, I received the Greek Catholic bishops of the Ukraine on ad-limina visit. Especially in eastern Ukraine, because of the Soviet regime, more than half of the people now consider themselves agnostic, without a religion. I asked the bishops - what are you doing, how do they behave, what do they want? And all the bishops said, "They have a great thirst for God and they want to know him; they see that without God, they cannot live."

Therefore, even with all the contradictions, resistances, oppositions, a thirst for God exists, and we have the beautiful calling of helping to give light. This is our adventure.

Of course, there are so many unforeseeable things, so many complications, suffering and all the rest. But even Our Lady at the moment of the Annunciation knew that she faced an unknown road, and knowing the prophecies about 'the handmaid of the Lord', knowing Sacred Scripture, she also knew there would be so much suffering along that road.

But she believed the words of the Angel: Do not be afraid because at the end, God is stronger. Do not fear even the Cross, and all the sufferings, because at the end, God leads us, and even these sufferings help us to arrive at the fullness of light.

Thus, may Our Lady of Trust give you, too, this great trust, this courage, this joy, of being servants of Christ, of truth and of life.

Here is a translation of the address delivered in Italian by the Holy Father to the Greek Catholic bishops of the Ukraine. It was the first ad-limina visit by bishops of that Church in 70 years. A copy of the address in Ukrainian was provided to each of the bishops later.


Your Beatitude,
Venerated brothers in the Episcopate:

I am truly happy to welcome you today at the conclusion of your visit ad limina Apostolorum. Serious objective reasons have kept you from making this pilgrimage to the Seat of Peter. The last visit made by Greek Catholic bishops to the Vatican goes back to 1937.

Now, after your respective Churches have recovered full freedom, you are here in representation of communities that have been renewed and vibrant in the faith, who never stopped feeling themselves to be in full communion with the Successor of Peter.

So welcome, dearest brothers, to this house where prayers for the beloved Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine have always been raised. In the Venerable Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halyč, whom I thank for the touching expressions of affection he has addressed to me; in the Apostolic Administrator of the Eparchy of Mukachevo of the Byzantine rite; and in all of you, I am happy to greet your respective communities, the tireless priests, the consecrated persons, and all those who carry out their pastoral ministry in the service of the People of God.

From the accounts of the situation in your Eparchies and Esarchates, I have been able to see how great your commitment has been to promote, consolidate and constantly verify the unity and collaboration within your communities, in order to be able to face united the challenges to you as pastors, which are the center of your concerns and pastoral programs.

I admire the generous work and the tireless testimony that you offer to your people and to your Church. In such pastoral and missionary efforts, your priests have been of necessary assistance, they who have been placed by the Good Shepherd to be collaborators by your side. I gladly take this occasion to express my sincere appreciation for their daily apostolic activity.

Encourage them, venerated brothers, even in the various initiatives of keeping abreast of the times, not to follow innovations in the world, but to offer to society those answers which only Christ can give to the expectations of justice and peace in the human heart.

For this, an adequate intellectual and spiritual preparation is necessary, which presupposes a permanent formative itinerary, first in the seminaries, where discipline and the spiritual life should always be well attended to, and then followed through the years of ministry.

The nurseries of vocation, which the seminaries are, precisely, need qualified educators and trainers who are competent in the human, scientific, doctrinal, ascetic and pastoral spheres, in order to help the future priests grow in their personal relationship with Christ, in progressive identification with him. Only thus can they take on the pastoral responsibilities assigned to them by their bishop in the spirit of authentic ecclesial service.

In this perspective, I exhort you to intensify, for your priests, courses in spiritual exercises, of theological and pastoral training and updating - if possible, in collaboration with the Latin Episcopate, each respecting the other's tradition.

It is undeniable that such collaboration between the two rites will allow the growth of better harmony in the hearts of those who serve the one Church. And I am sure that, with such an interior disposition, it will be possible to more easily alleviate eventual misunderstandings, in the knowledge that both rites belong to the one Catholic community, and both have full and equal citizenship in the one Ukrainian nation. In this light, it would be useful, venerated brothers, that you meet regularly, for example, once a year, with the Latin bishops.

The consecrated life has particular importance in the Eparchies and Esarchates entrusted to you, and I give thanks to God along with you for the religious. You have informed me, however, that in this regard, there are some difficulties, especially as it relates to the responsible obedience of the religious and their cooperation in the actual needs of the Church.

With the magnanimity of pastors and the patience of fathers, exhort these brothers and sisters to defend tirelessly the a-secular nature of their particular calling. Help them to cultivate the spirit of the Beatitudes and to faithfully observe the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience with evangelical loyalty so that they may render to the Church that characteristic testimony that they are called on to give.

There is another concern that is close to your hearts and that is the ecumenical task. We must humbly accept that in this field there continue to be concrete and objective obstacles. But we should not lose heart in the face of difficulties, but continue along the way that has been opened, with prayer and with patient charity.

On the other hand, in the Ukraine, Orthodox and Catholics have for centuries sought to weave together a daily, humble and serene dialog that embraces so many aspects of life. The failures, which must always be taken into account, should not dampen the enthusiasm for pursuing the objective desired by the Lord, "That they may all be one" (Jn 17, 2o).

Some time ago, meeting the fathers at a plenary session of the Congregation for the Promotion of Christian Unity, I observed: "That which, regardless, must be promoted above all, is the ecumenism of love, which comes directly from the new commandment left by Jesus to his disciples. Love accompanied by concrete actions creates trust, and opens hearts and eyes. The dialog of charity by its nature promotes and illuminates the dialog of truth: it is, in fact, in full truth that the definitive encounter will take place to which the Spirit of Christ leads us" (Teachings of Benedict XVI, II, 2, 2006, p.632). The Catholic University of the Ukraine will certainly offer valid support for the ecumenical effort.

Moreover, it is important to always involve more and more the lay faithful in the life of the Church so they may bring their specific contributions to the common good of Ukrainian society. This will require, from your part, constant attention to their formation through initiatives that are appropriate to their lay vocation: they could take part actively in the mission of the Church to be the 'ferment' of the living Gospel in the various sectors of society.

Venerated brothers, our meeting today, which takes place after 70 years, allows us to raise together to God an emotional thanksgiving for the rebirth of your Church after a tragic period of persecution.

On this occasion, I assure you that the Pope carries you all in his heart, that he accompanies you with affection and supports you in your difficult mission. I ask you to convey my heartfelt greeting to the priests, your primary collaborators, to the religious, and the entire Christian people, especially the children, the youth, the families, the sick, and those who find themselves in difficulty.

I assure each one remembrance in my prayers, invoking on everyone the protection of the heavenly Mother of God and your patron saints. Finally, with affection, I impart a special Apostolic Blessing to you, your communities, and to the beloved people of the Ukraine.

RESERVED FOR LETTER TO SYRIAN PATRIARCH

At 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord and XII World day for Consecrated Life, Cardinal Franc Rodé, Prefect of the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life, presided at a Eucharistic Concelebration in St. Peter's Basilica for members of various religious orders.

The Holy Mass was preceded by the Liturgy of Lights: lighting the candles, blessing the candles, and a procession. (The Feast of the Presentation is traditionally known as Candlemas in the Anglophone countries, Candelora in Italy.)



At 6:30, after the Mass, Benedict XVI came to the Basilica to meet with the religious orders, to whom he delivered the address, translated here:


Dear brothers and sisters!


I am very happy to meet you on the occasion of the Day for Consecrated Life, a traditional appointment for us made even more significant in the liturgical context of the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord.

I thank Cardinal Franc Rodé, who celebrated the Eucharistic Sacrament for you, and with him, the Secretary and his other co-workers in the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life.

With great affection, I greet all the Superiors General present and all of you who make up this singular assembly, which is an expression of the multiform richness that the consecrated life represents for the Church.

Narrating the presentation of Jesus at the temple, the evangelist Luke three times underscores the fact that Mary and Joseph acted 'according to the Law of the Lord' (cfr Lk 2,22.23.39), and that moreover, they appeared to be always in an attitude of attentive listening to the Word of God.

This attitude constitutes an eloquent example for you, men and women religious - for you as members of the secular institutes and other forms of consecrated life.

The next Ordinary Session of the Bishops' Synod will be dedicated to the Word of God in the life of the Church. I ask you, dear brothers and sisters, to offer your contribution to this Church initiative, testifying how important it is to place the Word of God at the center of everything, especially for those, like you, whom the Lord has called to follow him more intimately.

Consecrated life is, in fact, rooted in the Gospel, which has inspired it through the centuries, as its supreme rule, and to which, you are called to turn to constantly, in order to keep it alive and fecund, bearing fruit for the salvation of souls.

At the origin of all the various expressions of consecrated life, there is always a strong evangelical inspiration.

I think for example of St. Anthony Abbot, who was moved by these words of Christ: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell all you possess, give them to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come and follow me" (Mt 19,21) (cfr Vita Antonii, 2, 4).

St. Francis of Assisi, in his turn, said it was God who revealed to him that he should live according to the form of the holy Gospel (Testamento, 17: FF 116).

"Francis," wrote Tommaso da Celano, "hearing that the disciples of Christ should possess neither gold, silver nor money, nor carry a knapsack, bread or a staff for the road, nor shoes, nor two tunics...immediately exclaimed, exalted by the Holy Spirit: 'This is what I want, this is what I ask for, this is what I yearn to do with all my heart!'" (1 Celano, 83: FF 670, 672).

"It was the Holy Spirit," recalls his Instruction Ripartire da Cristo (Starting with Christ), "that illuminates with new light the Word of God to the founders. From it has come forth every charism, just as every Rule wants to be the expression of it" (No. 24).

In fact, the Holy Spirit attracts some persons to live the Gospel in a radical way and to translate it into more generous discipleship. Thus is born a work, a religious family which, by its very presence, becomes in its turn a living 'exegesis' of the Word of God.

The succession of charisms in consecrated life, says the Second Vatican Council, may be read as the 'unfolding' of Christ through the centuries, like a living Gospel which continually makes itself actual in ever new forms (cfr Conc. Vat. II, Cost. Lumen gentium, 46).

In the works of the founders, the mystery of Christ is reflected, his words are refracted as in a ray of light from his face, (which manifests) the splendor of the Father (cfr Post-Synodal Apost. Exhort. Vita consecrata, 16).

To follow Christ without compromises, as the Gospel proposes, has therefore constituted through the centuries the ultimate and supreme norm for religious life (cfr Perfectae caritatis, 2).

St. Benedict, in his Rule, refers to Scriptures as "the most correct norm for the life of man" (N. 73,2-5).

St. Dominic, "showed himself everywhere as an evangelical man, in his words as in his works" (Libellus, 104: in P. Lippini, San Domenico visto dai suoi contemporanei [St. Dominic seen by his contemporaries], Ed. Studio Dom., Bologna, 1982, 110) and he wanted his own preacher friars to be such, "evangelical men" (Prime Costituzioni o Consuetudines, 31).

St. Clare of Assisi followed the experience of Francis very closely. "The form of life of the Order of Poor Sisters," she wrote, "is this: to observe the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ"
(Rule, I, 1-2: FF 2750).

St. Vincenzo Pallotti wrote: "The fundamental rule of our Congregation is to imitate the life of our Lord Jesus Christ with all possible perfection" ((cfr Opere complete, II, 541-546; VIII, 63, 67, 253, 254, 466).

And St. Luigi Orione wrote: "Our first Rule and our life should be to observe the Holy Gospel in great humility and focused love of God" (Lettere di Don Orione, Roma 1969, vol. II, 278).

This very rich tradition attests that consecrated life is "profoundly rooted in the examples and teachings of Christ the Lord" (Vita consacrata, 1), It is "like a plant with many branches, which has its roots in the Gospel and procures abundant fruits in every season of the Church" (ivi, 5).

Its mission is to be a reminder that all Christians are called by the Word to live the Word and stay under its rule. It falls most especially on the religious "to keep alive among believers an awareness of the fundamental values of the Gospel" (Vita consacrata, 33).

In doing so, their testimony instills in the Church "a precious impulse towards ever more evangelical consistency" (ivi, 3) and thus, we could say, is 'an eloquent, even if often silent, preaching of the Gospel" (ivi, 25).

That is why, in my two encyclicals, as on other occasions, I have not failed to point to the examples of saints and blessed ones who belonged to institutes of consecrated life.

Dear brothers and sisters, nourish your days with prayer, meditation and listening to the Word of God. You, who are familiar with the ancient practice of lectio divina, should help even the faithful to value it in their daily existence. And know how to translate into testimony what the Word says, allowing yourself to be shaped by it, and like a seed sown on good ground, can bear abundant fruits.

Be always obedient to the Spirit and you will grow in the union with God; cultivate fraternal communion among yourselves and you will be ready to serve your brothers generously, especially those who are in need.

May other men see your good works, fruit of the Word of God which lives in you and which glorify your heavenly Father (cfr Mt 5,16)!

In confiding these reflections to you, I thank you for the valuable service that you render to the Church and, as I invoke for you the protection of Mary and the sainted and blessed founders of your institutes, I impart from the heart the Apostolic blessing to you and your respective religious families, with a special thought for the young men and women in training, and your brothers and sisters who are sick, or aged, or in difficulty. I assure you all of remembrance in my prayers.

On the afternoon of Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a prayer assembly in the form of the Roman penitential stations was presided over by the Holy Father.

It began with a moment of prayer at the Church of Sant'Anselmo on the Aventine Hill, followed by a penitential procession to the nearby Basilica of Santa Sabina. Taking part were cardinals, archbishops and bishops, the Benedictine monks of Sant'Anselmo, the Dominican priests of Santa Sabina, and many lay faithful.

In Santa Sabina, the Holy Father presided at Mass with the blessing and imposition of ashes. Here is a translation of the homily given by the Pope:


Dear brothers and sisters:

If Advent is the season par excellence which invites us to hope in the God-who-is-coming, Lent renews our hope in He who has made us pass from death to life.

Both are seasons of purification - as indicated even by the liturgical color which both have in common - but especially Lent, which is totally oriented towards the mystery of Redemption, and is defined as 'the journey to true conversion' (Collect Prayer).

At the start of this penitential itinerary, I wish to pause and reflect on prayer and suffering as qualifying aspects of the Lenten liturgical season. To the third Lenten practice of almsgiving, I dedicated my Lenten Message which was released last week.

In the encyclical Spe salvi, I indicated prayer and suffering, along with behavior and doing justice, as occasions to learn and exercise hope. We can therefore say that the Lenten season - precisely because it invites us to prayer, penitence and fasting, constitutes a providential occasion to make our hope more alive and firm.

Prayer nourishes hope, because nothing more than praying with faith expresses the reality of God in our life. Even in the loneliness of the hardest trials, nothing and no one can keep me from turning to the Father, 'in the secret' of my heart, where only he can 'see', as Jesus tells us in the Gospel (cfr Mt. 6,4,6-18).

What comes to mind are two moments in the earthly existence of Jesus - one at the start, and the other almost at the end of his public life: his 40 days in the desert, which the Lenten season reprises, and the agony in Gethsemane.

Both are essentially times of prayer: prayer to the Father, one on one, alone in the desert; and prayer full of 'mortal anguish' in the Garden of Olives. In both circumstances, it is in prayer that Christ unmasks the deceptions of the Tempter and defeats him.

Prayer thus shows itself to be the first and principal 'weapon' "to face victoriously the combat against the spirit of evil" (Collect Prayer).

Christ's prayer culminates on the Cross, and is expressed in the Seven Last Words that the Gospels tell us, in which he cries out: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27,46; Mk 15,34; cfr Os 21,1). In fact, Christ invokes as his own the plea of those, besieged with no way out by enemies, who have no one but God to turn to, and from whom, beyond any human possibility, they may experience grace and salvation.

With those words from the Psalm - first made by a suffering man, then by the People of God suffering the apparent absence of God - Jesus took upon himself the age-old cry of mankind suffering the apparent absence of God, to bring this cry to the heart of God. Thus, praying in his last solitude together with all of mankind, he opens God's heart to us.

There is no contradiction, therefore, between those words of the Psalm and Jesus's later words full of filial trust: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23,46; cfr Ps 30,6). Even these are taken from a Psalm, the 30th - the dramatic plea of a person who, abandoned by everyone, trusts in God with certainty.

The prayer of supplication, filled with hope, is the leitmotiv of Lent, and makes us experience God as the only anchor of salvation. Even when it is collective, the prayer of the People of God is the voice of the single heart and the single soul. It is a 'one on one' dialog, as was the moving imploration of Queen Esther when her people were about to be exterminated: "My Lord, our King, you are the only one! Come help me who am alone and have no other recourse but you, because a great danger is on me" (Est 4,171).

In the face of great danger, one needs a greater hope, and this is the hope that can only count on God.

Prayer is a crucible in which our expectations and aspirations are exposed to the light of God's word, they are immersed in dialog with him who is the Truth, and emerge liberated from hidden lies and compromises with various forms of selfishness (cfr Spe salvi, 33).

Without the dimension of prayer, the human ego ends up closing on itself, and conscience, which should be an echo of God's voice, risks being reduced to a mirror of the ego, so that interior 'conversation' becomes nothing but a monolog generating a thousand self-justifications.

Prayer is also a guarantee of openness to others: whoever makes himself free for God and his demands, opens up simultaneously to others, to the brother who knocks at the door of the heart and asks to be listened to, for attention and pardon, even sometimes for correction, but always in fraternal charity.

True prayer is never self-centered, but always focused on others. As such, it leads the praying person to the 'ecstasy' of charity, to the capacity to get out of oneself to be a neighbor to another in humble and disinterested service.

True prayer is the Mover of the world because it keeps it open to God. That is why without prayer, there is no hope, only illusion.

Indeed, it is not God's presence that alienates man - it is his absence. Without the true God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, hopes are only illusions which lead men to escape from reality.

To talk to God, to be in his presence, allowing oneself to be enlightened and purified by his Word, introduces us to the core of reality, to the intimate Mover of cosmic being - it introduces us, so to speak, the the pulsing heart of the universe.

Harmoniously linked to prayer, fasting and almsgiving may be considered occasions to learn the exercise of Christian hope. The Fathers and the writers of antiquity loved to underscore that these three dimensions of the evangelical life are inseparable, that they nourish each other, and that they bear so much better fruits the more they are practised together.

Thanks to the joint action of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, Lent in its totality forms Christians to be men and women of hope, on the model of the saints.

I would now like to reflect briefly on suffering, since as I wrote in Spe salvi, "The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and with those who suffer. This holds true both for the individual as well as for society" (Spe salvi, 38).

Easter, towards which Lent is directed, is the mystery that gives sense to human suffering, in the excess of God's com-passione realized in Jesus Christ.

The Lenten Journey, being all irradiated by Paschal light, makes us re-live what happens in the divine-human heart of Christ, going to Jerusalem for the last time to offer himself in expiation (cfr Is 53,10).

Suffering and death came down like shadows as he came nearer to the Cross, but also became the flame of love. Christ's suffering is totally permeated by the light of love (cfr Spe salvi, 38): the love of the Father which allows the Son to proceed trustingly towards his last 'baptism' , as he himself described the culmination of his mission (cfr Lk 12,50).

Jesus received that baptism of love and pain for us, for all mankind. He suffered for the truth and for justice, bringing to the history of man the gospel of suffering which is the other face of the gospel of love.

God cannot suffer (patire), but he can and wants to 'suffer with' us (com-patire). From Christ's suffering, every human suffering can have con-solatio, "the consolation of God's compassionate love - and so the star of hope rises" (Spe salvi, 39).

With suffering as with prayer, the history of the Church is rich with the testimonies of those who spent themselves for others without sparing anything, at the cost of great sufferings.

The greater the hope that inspires us, the more we have the capacity to suffer for the love of truth and goodness, offering joyously the small and great efforts of every day and placing these within the great compassion of Christ (cfr ivi, 40).

In this journey of evangelical perfection, may we be helped by Mary who, together with her Son, had her immaculate heart pierced with the sword of sorrow.

In these days, remembering the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin in Lourdes, we are led to meditate on Mary's sharing in the sufferings of humanity. At the same time, we are encourage to draw comfort from the 'treasury of compassion' (ibid.) of the Church, to which she has contributed more than any other creature.

Let us then begin Lent in spiritual union with Mary, who "walked forward in the path of faith' behind her Son (cfr Lumen gentium, 58) and always precedes his disciples in the journey towards the Paschal light. Amen.

The Holy Father met the parish priests and other clergy of the Diocese of Rome in their traditional encounter at the start of Lent on Thursday, Feb. 7, at the Hall of Benedictions. As in the past two years, it took the form of a question-and-answer session.

Here is a translation. There were 10 questions, so I will post each Q&A as I am able to translate each part.



#1 Giuseppe Corona, Deacon:

Most Blessed Father, I wish to express above all my gratitude and that of my fellow deacons for the ministry that the Church so providentially revived with the (Second Vatican) Council, a ministry which allows us to give full expression to our vocation.

We are involved in a great variety of tasks carried out in many different areas: the family, at work, the parish, society, even missions in Africa and Latin America, areas which Your Holiness indicated in the audience that you gave us on the 25th anniversary of the Roman diaconate.

Now there are 108 of us in Rome, and we would like Your Holiness to give us a pastoral initiative that can become a sign of a more incisive presence of the permanent diaconate in the city of Rome, as it was in the early centuries of the Church of Rome.

In fact, sharing a significant common objective would, on the one hand, allow the cohesion in the diaconal fraternity to grow; and on the other, would give better visibility to our service in the city.

Therefore, we would like to ask Your Holiness to indicate what this initiative could be, and the ways and forms it can take. In the name of all deacons, I greet Your Holiness with filial affection.


THE HOLY FATHER:
Thanks for this testimony from one of Rome's more than 100 deacons. I, too, would like to express my joy and my gratitude to the Council because it restored this important ministry to the universal Church.

I must say that when I was Archbishop of Munich, I did not have more than three or four deacons, but I have always favored this ministry because it is part of the wealth of the Church's sacramental ministry.

At the same time, it can also be a link to the lay world, the professional world, and the world of priestly ministry - because many deacons continue to practice their secular professions and keep their jobs - important jobs or even the simple life - while on Saturdays and Sundays, they work for the Church.

Thus, they bear witness in the world today, even in the workplace, to the presence of the faith, the sacramental ministry and the diaconal dimension of the sacrament of Holy Orders. I think this is very important indeed: the visibility of the diaconal dimension.

Of course, every priest also remains a deacon and should always think of that dimension, because the Lord made himself our minister, our deacon. Let us think of his gesture of washing the feet, with which he shows us how the Master, the Lord, serves as a deacon, and wants that those who follow him be deacons as well, that they carry out this service for mankind, to the point of washing the dirty feet of the persons entrusted to our care. This, to me, is an aspect of great importance.

On this occasion, I am reminded - even if it may not be inherent to the question - a small incident which Paul VI noted. Everyday during the Council, the Gospel was appropriately enthroned. And he told his master of ceremonies that just once, he would like to do that himself. And he was told, "No, this is the task of deacons, not of the Pope, not of the Supreme Pontiff, not of bishops." And he noted in his diary: "But I am also a deacon, I remain a deacon, and I, too, would want to exercise this ministry, by enthroning the Word of God. "

And that is why the diaconate concerns us all. Priests remain deacons, but it is the deacons who show the world what the diaconal dimension is to the priestly ministry.

The liturgical enthronement of the Word of God every day during the Council was always of great importance for us: it told us who was the true Lord of that assembly, it told us that on the throne is the Word of God, and we exercise our ministry by listening to it and interpreting it, in order to offer this Word to others.

So what we do is widely significant for everyone: to enthrone the Word of God in the world, the living Word, Christ. It is truly He who governs our personal life as well as our life in the parishes.

But you have asked a question which, I must say, goes beyond my own powers: what should be the tasks proper to the deacons of Rome. I know that the Cardinal Vicar knows much more than I the actual situations in the city, in the diocesan community of Rome.

I think that one characteristic of the diaconal ministry is the multiplicity of its applications. In the International Theological Commission some years ago, we studied at length the diaconate in history and in the Church today. And we discovered that there is no single profile.

What needs to be done depends on the preparation of the deacons and the situations in which they find themselves. So there can be the most diverse applications and concretizations, but always in communion with the Bishop and the parish, of course.

Different situations show various possibilities, again according to the professional preparation that the deacons have. They could be engaged in the cultural sector - which is very important today; or they may have a voice or an important position in the educational sector. This year, precisely, we are focused on the problem of education as central to our future, for the future of mankind.

It is true that charity was the original sector for diaconal work in Rome, because the presbyteral seats and the diaconates were the centers for Christian charitable work. So this was a fundamental sector from the very beginning in the city of Rome.

In my encyclical Deus caritas est, I showed that not only preaching and liturgy are essential for the Church and for its ministry, but it is just as essential for it to be there for the poor and the needy - to give the service of charity in all its multiple dimensions.

And so I hope that at any time, in every diocese, even in different situations, this will remain a fundamental if not a priority dimension of the task of deacons, although not the only one, as even the early Church showed us - in which seven deacons were elected precisely to allow the Apostles to dedicate themselves to prayer, the liturgy and preaching.

Even if later, Stephen found himself having to preach to the Hellenists - the Jews who spoke Greek - and so, the field of preaching widened. He was conditioned, let us say, by the cultural situation, in which he had the voice to make present in a particular sector the Word of God and make much more possible the universality of Christian testimony. He opened the door to St. Paul, who witnessed his stoning, and who was later, in a sense, his successor in universalizing the Word of God.

Maybe the Cardinal Vicar will add something - as I am not that close to the concrete situations in the diocese.


CARDINAL RUINI:
Holy Father, I can only confirm, as you said, that even in Rome, the deacons work in many areas, mostly in the parishes, where they are concerned with charitable work, but many are also involved in pastoral work with families.

Since all the deacons are married, they prepare parishioners for matrimony, follow up on young married couples, and the like. Then they also contribute significantly to pastoral health care, and to the Vicariate - some of them, in fact, work for the Vicariate - and as you heard earlier, in the missions.

I think, of course, that in terms of numbers, the task that is by far the most relevant is what they do in the parishes, even though many fields are opening up, and because of this, we now have more than a hundred permanent deacons.



#2 Fr. Graziano Bonfitto
Vicar, Parish of Ognissanti (All Saints)

Holy Father, I come from the town of San Marco in Lamis, in the province of Foggia. I am a religious from the the community of Don Orione and have been a priest for one and a half years, currently vice parish priest of Ognissanti in the Appian quarter.

I will not hide my emotion from you and the incredible joy that I feel at this moment, which for me is very privileged. You are the bishop and pastor of our diocesan church, but you are also the Pope, and therefore, Pastor of the universal Church. That is why my emotion is irremediably double.

I wish to express before everything my gratitude for all that you are doing, day after day, not only for our diocese of Rome but for the whole Church. Your words and actions, your attentions towards us, the people of God, are a sign of the love and closeness that you have for everyone and for each one.

My apostolate is primarily with the youth. And it is in their name that I wish to thank you today. My sainted founder, St. Luigi Orione, used to say that the youth would be the sun or storm of tomorrow. I think that in the historical moment we are living, the youth are as much sun as storm today, now.

We young people today feel more strongly than ever the need for certainties. We want sincerity, freedom, justice, peace. We want persons walking with us who can listen to us - exactly as Jesus did with the disciples at Emmaus.

The youth want persons who are capable of showing them the way to freedom, to responsibility, to love and truth. That is, they have an inexhaustible thirst for Christ. A thirst for joyous witnesses who have encountered Christ and have wagered their whole existence on him.

Young people want a Church that is always 'in the field' in action, so to speak, and always close to heed their demands. They want it present as they make their choices in life, even if there may persist a sense of detachment with regard to the Church itself. Young people are looking for a trustworthy hope - as you wrote in your recent letter to us the faithful of Rome - to avoid living without God.

Holy Father - if you will allow me to call you «papà» [as 'father', not as Pope], how difficult it is to live in God, with God, for God, when we young people feel besieged on all sides. There are many false prophets and vendors of illusion. There are too many peddlers of falsehood and ignoble ideas.

Nonetheless, young people today who believe in God, even if they feel themselves encircled, are convinced that God is the hope that resists all illusions, that only his love cannot be destroyed by death, even if most times, it is not easy to find the space and the courage to be his witnesses.

What to do then? How to behave? Is is worth wagering one's life on Christ? Life, family, love, joy, justice, respect for others, freedom, prayer, charity - are these values still worth defending? Is the life of blessed ones - blessed by the standards of the Beatitudes - a life adapted to the young people of the third millennium?

I thank you infinitely for your attention, your affection and your solicitude for young people. They are with you: they respect you, love you and count on you. Be close to us always, shows us ever more forcefully how to get to to Christ, who is the way, the life and the truth. Inspire us to aim high. Ever higher. And pray for us always. Thank you.

Thank you for this beautiful testimonial from a young priest who works with young people who accompanies them, as you say, to help them walk with Christ. What to say? We all know how difficult it is for a young person today to live as a Christian. The cultural context, the mediatic context, offer everything but the way to Christ. It seems to make it impossible to see Christ as the center of life and to live life as Jesus shows us.

Nonetheless, I think that many also feel more than ever the inadequacy of all these offerings, of a lifestyle that in the end leaves only emptiness.

In this sense, I think the readings in today's liturgy are very appropriate - that from Deuteronomy (30, 15-20) and the Gospel passage from St. Luke (9, 22-25) respond to what, in substance, we have to say to young people and also, ever anew, to ourselves.

As you said, sincerity is fundamental. young people should feel that we are not saying words we have not ourselves experienced, but that we speak because we have found - and continue to seek anew every day - the truth, as truth for our life, for my life.

Only if we are on this road, ourselves, if we seek to assimilate ourselves to this quest and to assimilate our life to that of the Lord, then our words can be credible with visible and convincing logic.

This is the great fundamental rule not only for Lent, but for all of Christian life: Choose life, the reading tells us. You have before you life and death: choose life. That would be the natural response, of course. But there are those who feel deep within a will to destruction, to death, not wanting to exist anymore, because everything is contradictory for them. Unfortunately, this is a phenomenon that is widening. With all the contradictions and false promises, life ultimately appears contradictory - no longer a gift but a condemnation, and that is why there are those who wish death more than life, when a normal man would say, Yes, I want life.

The question is how to find life, what are we choosing, how do we choose life? We know the offerings that are usually had these days - go to the discotheque, take everything you can get, consider freedom as doing what you please, everything that comes to mind at a certain moment.

But we know - and can show - that this road is one of lies, because in the end, one finds not life but the abyss of nothingness. Choose life! The same reading tells us: God is your life, you have chosen life, and your choice is God. This is fundamental. Only this way can our horizon be sufficiently large, and only this way we shall be at the source of life which is stronger than death and all its threats.

Therefore, the choice is clear. It must be understood that whoever takes the road without God will find himself in darkness, even if there may be moments when he seems to have found life.

Then the next step is how to find God, how to choose God. And here, we come to the Gospel: God is not an unknown, nor a hypothesis of the first beginning of the cosmos. God has flesh and blood. He is one of us. We know him by name and by face. He is Jesus who speaks to us in the Gospels. He is man and God. And being God, he chose to be man in order to make it possible for us to choose God. And so we need to first make the acquaintance of Jesus adn then to have his friendship in order to walk with him.

That, I think, should be the fundamental point in our pastoral care of young people: to call their attention to choosing God who is life. To the fact that God is. And he exists in a concrete way. And therefore to teach them to make friends with Jesus Christ.

There is a third step. This friendship with Jesus is not with someone who is unreal, or someone who belongs to the past or is remote from us, at the right hand of God. He is present in his body, which is still a body in flesh and blood: the Church and communion in the Church.

We should construct and make more accessible communities which reflect - are a mirror of - the great community of the living Church. It is a totality: the living experience of the community, with all its human weaknesses, but nonetheless real, that has a clear road, and a solid sacramental life, in which we can touch that which may appear to be distant, the presence of the Lord.

Int this way we can learn the commandments - and here we come back to Deuteronomy, with which we started. The reading says, : to choose God means to choose according to his Word, to live according to that Word. This may sound a bit positivistic at first: they are imperatives. But first, consider that his friendship is a gift. Then one can understand that these road sings are expressions of the reality of that friendship.

This, we can say, is a general view that comes from contact with Sacred Scripture and the daily life of the Church. But it must be translated step by step in concrete encounters with the young people: to guide them in their dialog with Jesus through prayer, through the reading of Sacred Scripture - communal reading, above all, but also personal - and through sacramental life. These are all steps to make these experiences present even in professional life, although it is often marked by the absence of God and by the apparent impossibility of seeing him present. But it is precisely then, through our life and our experience of God, that we should seek to bring the presence of Christ even into a world remote from God.

There is a thirst for God. Not long ago, I received the ad-limina visit of bishops from a country where more than half the people say they are atheist or agnostic. But they told me: In reality, everyone has a thirst for God. It is hidden but it exists.

Therefore, let us start with the young people. let us build communities in which the Church is reflected. Let us learn and teach friendship with Jesus. Then, full of joy and full of this experience, we can make God present in the world even today.


#3 Pietro Riggi, Salesian
Borgo Ragazzi Don Bosco

Holy Father, I work in an oratory (chapel) with a reception center for minors at risk. I wanted to ask you: On March 25, 2007, you delivered some remarks extemporaneously, lamenting that today, hardly anyone speaks of the 'Novissimi' (Last Things).

In fact, in the catechisms that the CEI uses to teach the faith to our children who are preparing for confession, communion and confirmation, some truths of the faith are missing. It never speaks of hell, nor of purgatory, only once of Paradise, once of sin, but only original sin.

Without these essential parts of the Creed, will this not crumble the logic that supports the Redemption by Christ? Without sin, without Hell, then the idea of redemption itself becomes diminished. Do these omissions not favor losing the sense of sin, and therefore, the need for the sacrament of reconciliation, and even the loss of the sacramental persona of the priest who has the power to absolve sins and to celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass in thr name of Christ?

Today, unfortunately, even we priests gloss over it when the Gospel speaks of hell. One does not speak of it. We don't know how to speak of Paradise either. We don't know how to speak of eternal life. We risk giving faith only a horizontal dimension, or keeping the horizontal too detached from the vertical. All this is missing in the catechism for the children, unless some parish priest takes the initiative.

If I am not mistaken, this year is the 25th anniversary of the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Is it not posssible to renew this consecration solemnly for the whole world?

The Berlin Wall fell; but there are so many walls of sin that have yet to fall - hatred, exploitation, savage capitalism. These walls should fall, and we pray that the Immaculate Heart of Mary may triumph to realize this dimension.

I would also note that Our Lady did not shirk from speaking of hell and paradise to the children in Fatima, who, not by chance, were children of catechetical age - 7, 9 and 12. Whereas we, more often than not, omit all of this. Could you tell us something about this?


You have spoken rightly of the fundamental themes of the faith which unfortunately now appear all too rarely in our preaching.

In the encyclical Spe salvi, I wanted precisely to speak of these, including the Last Judgment, justice in general, and in this context, of purgatory, hell and paradise.

We are all still laboring under the Marxist objection that Christians only speak of the beyond, neglecting what is happening on earth. And so we wanted to show that we are really concerned with the things of the world, that we do not speak only of remote realities which are of no use to this world.

Now, whereas it is right to show that Christians do work for the good of the world - and that we are all called to work so that this earth may become truly a city of God and for God - we should not forget the other dimension. Without being aware of it, we are not really working well for the earth.

To show this was one of my fundamental purposes for writing the encyclical. When God's justice is not recognized, when the possibility of hell is not known, nor that of the radical and definitive failure of life, then one does not recognize the possibility and the need for purification. Then, man does not work well for the earth, because he loses his criteria, he no longer knows himself since he does not know God, and he destroys the earth.

All the great ideologies have promised: we will take everything in hand; we will not neglect the earth any longer; we will create the new world which is just, correct, fraternal. Instead, they destroyed the world. We saw it with Nazism, we saw it with Communism, which both promised to construct the world as it should be, but instead, ended up destroying the world.

In the ad-limina visits of the bishops from the countries which were once Communist, I always see anew how those lands not simply remain damaged physically in their environment, but above all, and more seriously, in their souls. To recover a truly human conscience, illuminated by the presence of God, is the first work of reconstruction in those countries.

Even rebuilding the earth, respecting the cry of suffering from a damegd planet, can be realized only by finding God in one's soul, with eyes open to God.

You are right: we should speak about all this because of our responsibility to the world, to the men who live today. We should speak also, and precisely, of sin as a possibility of destroying oneself along with others and the earth itself.

In the encyclical, I sought to show how it is precisely God's laswt Judgment which guarantees justice. We all want a just world. But we cannot repair all the destruction of the past, nor make restitution to all who have been unjustly tortured and killed. Only God can create justice, which should be justice for all, including the dead.

As Adorno, a great Marxist, said: Only the resurrection of the flesh - which he considred unreal - can create justice. We believe in this resurrection of the flesh, in which we will all be equal.

But today, man has been accustomed to think: sin is nothing; God is great, he knows us; thereefore, sin does not count because at the end, God will be good to all of us. What a beautiful hope! But there is justice, and there is sin. Those who have destroyed men and the earth cannot immediately sit at the table of the Lord with their victims.

God creates justice. We should bear that in mind. That is why it was important for me to write about purgatory, which for me, is a truth that is so obvious, so evident, and even so necessary and comforting, and can therefore not be lacking.

I sought to say: Perhaps there are not so many who have caused so much destruction that they must remain incurable for always, because there is no longer any element to which God's love can hold on to, and they no longer have the least capacity to love. That would be hell.

On the other hand, there are certainly few - or at least, not too many - who are so pure as to enter right away into communion with God. Most of us hope that there will be something curable in us, that we will, in the end, have the will to serve God and others, to love according to God.

But there are so many who are wounded, and there is so much filth. We need to be prepared, to be purified. And this is our hope: that even with so much filth in our souls, in the end the Lord will give us the possibility of salvation by washing us finally with his goodness which comes from the Cross, and makes us capable of being with him in eternity. And so, Paradise is hope, it is justice finally realized.

This also gives us criteria for living, so that our time on earth can be paradise in some way, a first glimpse of paradise. Where men live according to these criteria, a bit of paradise appears on earth, and it is visible.

This also demonstrates the truth of the faith, the necessity to follow the commandments, of which we must talk more about later. They are truly road signs which show us how to live well, how to choose life.

And so, we should also talk about sin, and the sacrament of penance and reconciliation. A sincere man knows he is sinful, that he must begin again, that he must be purified. And that is the wondrous reality that the Lord offers us: the possibility of renewal after so many mistakes, so many sins. It is the great promise, the gift that the Church gives. Which, for example, psychotherapy cannot offer.

Psychotherapy is so widespread today and even necesdsary in the face of so many psyches that have been destoryed or seriously injured. But the possibilities of psychotherapy are very limited; it can only seek to re-equuilibrate an unbalanced soul. But it cannot give true renewal, it cannot overcome the serious afflictions of the soul. And so it can only be provisional and never definitive.

The sacrament of penance gives us the opportunity to renew ourselves completely through the power of God - ego te absolvo, I absolve you - which is possible because Christ has taken these sins upon himself.

I think this is a great necessity today. We can be healed. The souls that are wounded and sick, as we have all experienced, need not only good advice but true renewal, which can only come from the power of God, the power of Love crucified.

I think this is the great nexus of the mysteries which ultimately impact our lives. We should re-meditate on all this ourselves and then convey it anew to our people.

#4 Fr. Massimo Tellan
Parish Priest of Sant'Enrico

I am Don Massimo Tellan, I have been a priest for 15 years, in 6 parishes of Casal Monastero, north sector.

I think we all realize that we live ever more immersed in a world culturally inflated with words, often devoid of meaning, that disorient the human heart to the point of rendering it deaf to the words of truth.

That eternal Word which became flesh and has the face of Jesus of Nazareth has therefore become evanescent for many, and especially for the new generations, remote and lacking consistency. Certainly confused in the jungle of ambiguous and ephemeral images that bombard us daily.

What space is there for educating in the faith, to the words that must be heard and the images to contemplate? What has happened to the art of recounting the faith and introducing to mystery, such as what happened in the past with the biblia pauperum?

In today's society of images, how can we recover the torrential force of 'seeing' which goes with the mystery of the Incarnation and the encounter with Jesus, as Andrew and John experienced om the banks of the Jordan when they were invited to come and see where the master lived?

In other words, how can we educate the faithful to search for and contemplate that true beauty which, as Dostoevsky said, will save the world?

I thank you, Holiness, for your attention, and if you would allow me, with the consensus of my brothers as well, besides being a priest, but also as a dilettante artist, I would like to accompany what I just said with this icon of Christ being tortured at the pillar, an image of suffering and humiliated mankind that the Incarnate Word assumed not only at the Ecce homo but up to his death on the Cross; at the same time, it is also, an actual image of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, which is often wounded by the arrogance of evil, but called along with the Word Incarnate, to embrace the sins of the world in order to redeem it .



Thank you, Holy Father, and thank you, my brothers! All of them, Holiness, more than me and better than me, are committed to showing the world the face of the Lord with the testimony of their own lives. If it is true, as it is, that whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father, then whoever sees us, his Church, should be able to see Christ.


Thank you for this beautiful gift. I am grateful that we do not have just words but images as well. We see that even today, new images are being born from Christian meditation. as Christian culture is reborn, so too, Christian iconography.

Yes, we live amid an inflation of words and of images. So it is difficult to create a space for the Word and the Image. I think that precisely in the situation of our world, which we all know, which we must suffer, which everyone suffers, the Lenten season gains new significance.

Certainly, corporal fasting, which was for a time considered no longer fashionable, now more than ever appears necessary. It is not difficult to understand that we should fast. Sometimes, we even find ourselves dealing with certain exaggerations of fasting because of a wrong idea of beauty.

In any case, corporal fasting is an important thing, because we are both body and soul, and discipline of the body, material discipline, is important for spiritual life, which is always incarnated in a person who has both body and soul.

That is one dimension. Today other dimensions manifest themselves and are growing. I think that the Lenten season could also be a time of fasting from words and images. We need a bit of silence, we need a space without the permanent bombardment of images.

In this sense, to render accessible and understandable today the significance of 40 days of interior and exterior discipline is very important to help us understand that one dimension of our Lent, of this corporal and spiritual discipline, is to create for us a space of silence, even one without images, to reopen our hearts to the true image and the true word.

I think it is promising that even today, one can see a rebirth of Christian art, whether it is meditative music - such as that born at Taize - or even, the art of the icon, a Christian art which remains, shall we say, within the general standards of the iconographic art of the past, but widening itself to the experiences and visions of today.

Where there is true and profound meditation on the Word, where we truly enter into the contemplation of the visibility of God in this world, of the tangibility of God in the world, new images are born, new possibilities of making visible the events of salvation.

This is precisely a consequence of the event of Incarnation. The Old Testament prohibited any image, and it had to do that in a world full of divinities. It lived in the great emptiness which was represented even in the interior of the temple where, in contrast with other temples, there was no image at all, only the empty throne of the Word, the mysterious presence of the invisible God, not circumscribed by our images.

But then the new step was that this mysterious God liberated us from this inflation of images, even in a time full of images of divinities, giving us the freedom to see the essential. He appears with a face, a body, with a human story which is at the same time a divine story.

It is a story that continues in the stories of the saints, the martyrs, the saints of charity, of the word, which are always further explanation, a continuation, in the mystical Body of Christ of his human and divine life - which gives us the fundamental images in which, beyond the superficials that hide reality, we can open our eyes towards Truth itself.

In this sense, I think the post-Conciliar iconoclastic period was excessive, although it had its sense, because it was perhaps necessary to free ourselves from the superficiality of too many images.

Getting back to knowing the God who made himself man: As the Letter to the Ephesians tells us, He is the true image. In this true image we see - beyond the appearances that hide the truth - Truth itself: "Whoever sees me sees the Father".

In this sense, I would say, with much respect and much reverence, that we can recover Christian art - including the essential and great representations of the mystery of God - in the iconographic tradition of the Church. Thus we can rediscover the true Image covered by appearances.

It is really an important work of Christian education: to liberate the Word behind the words, which always requires new spaces of silence, of meditation, of deep examination, of abstinence, of discipline.

It is equally an education in the true Image, that is, the rediscovery of the great icons created in the history of Christianity: with humility, it can liberate us from superficial images. This type of iconoclasm is always necessary to rediscover
the Image, the fundamental images that express the presence of God in the flesh.

This is a fundamental dimension of educating in the faith, in true humanism, which we are searching for at this time in Rome. We have returned to rediscover the icon with its very severe rules, without any Renaissance 'prettiness'. Thus we can ourselves re-enter a path of humble rediscovery of the great images, towards a new liberation from too many words, too many images, to rediscover the essential images that are necessary to us.

God himself has shown us his image and we can recover this image through a profound meditation of the Word which will allow new images to be reborn.

Let us therefore pray the Lord that he may help us in this path of true education in the faith, which is always not simply a listening but also a seeing.


#5 Fr. Paul Chungat
Parish Vicar of San Giuseppe Cottolengo

My name is Don Chungat, Indian, currently vicar of the parish of St. Joseph in Valle Aurelia. I wish to thank you for the opportunity you have given me to serve in the diocese of Rome for three years.

This has been for me, and for my studies, a great help, just as I think it is for all the student priests who remain in Rome. Now it is time for me to return to my diocese in India where Catholics are only 1 percent and the other 99 percent are non-Christian.

What has given me much to think about these days is the situation of evangelical mission in my country. In the recent note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there are some words that are difficult to understand with respect to inter-religious dialog.

For example, in #10, the words 'the fullness of salvation', and in the introductory part, that of 'the need for formal incorporation into the Church'.

These are concepts which are difficult to understand if I bring these things to India and I must speak to my Hindu friends and to the faithful of other religions.

My question is: should we interpret 'fullness of salvation' in a qualitative or quantitative sense? If it is quantitative, then there is some difficulty. The Second Vatican Council says there is a possibility of light even in other faiths. In the qualitative sense, beyond historicity and the fullness of faith, what are the other things to show the uniqueness of our faith in terms of inter-religious dialog?

Thank you for this intervention. You know very well that the breadth of your questions would require a whole semester of theology. I will try to be brief. You know theology - there are great teachers and so many books.

Above all, thank you for your testimony of the joy you have in being able to work in Rome even if you are Indian. For me, this is a wonderful phenomenon of Catholicism. Today, not only do missionaries go from the West to other continents, but there is an exchange of priests: Indians, Africans, South Americans work here, and our priests go to other continents. It is a give and take on all sides.

This is the vitality of Catholicism, where we are all debtors of the Lord's gifts, and then we give ourselves to each other. And it is in this reciprocity of gifts, of give and take, that the Catholic Church lives. You can learn from the Western environment and your experiences here, and we learn no less from you.

I see that the spirit of religiosity which exists in Asia as in Africa surprises the Europeans who are often a bit cold in their faith. Therefore, this vitality - at least of the religious spirit - which exists in these continents, is a great gift for everyone, but especially for us, the bishops of the Western world, particularly a gift coming from the countries where the phenomenon of immigration is most evident - the Philippines, India, etc. Our cold Catholicism is revived by the fervor which comes from you. Therefore, Catholicism is a great gift.

Let us come to the questions you posed. I do not have before me the exact words of the document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that you referred to. In any case, I would like to say two things:

On the one hand, dialog is absolutely necessary - to know each other reciprocally, to respect each other and seek to collaborate in all possible ways for the great aims of mankind and for its great needs, to overcome fanaticisms and create a spirit of peace and love. This is in the spirit of the Gospel, whose sense is precisely that the spirit of love, which we learned from Jesus, the peace of Jesus which he gave us through the Cross, should be universally present in the world.

In this sense, dialog should be true dialog, respecting the other, and accepting his otherness. But it should also be evangelical, in the sense that its fundamental aim is to help men live in love, and to do what is possible so that this love may expand everywhere.

But this dimension of dialog that is so necessary - that is, respect for the other, tolerance, cooperation - does not exclude the other, namely, that the Gospel is a great gift, the gift of great love, of great truth, which we cannot keep for ourselves alone, but which we should offer to others, knowing that God gives them the freedom and the light necessary to find the truth. The Gospel is our truth, and therefore, it is also the road I take.

Mission is not imposition, but offering the gift of God, leaving it to His goodness to enlighten persons so that the gift of friendship with the God who has a human face may be extended. That is why we want to - and should - always testify to this faith and the love that lives in our faith.

We would be neglecting a true duty, human and divine, if we leave others alone and keep the faith that we have only to ourselves. We would be unfaithful to ourselves, if we did not offer this faith to the world, even while respecting the freedom of others.

The presence of our faith in the world is a positive thing, even if no one is converted. It is a point of reference. Representatives of non-Christian religions have told me: For us, the presence of Christianity is a reference point that helps us, even if we do not convert.

Let us think of the great figure of Mahatma Gandhi: while he was firmly bound to his religion, the Sermon on the Mount was to him a fundamental reference point, which shaped all of his life.

That is the ferment of the faith - even without converting him to Christianity, it had entered his life. I think that this ferment of Christian love which comes clearly through the Gospel is - besides the missionary work which seeks to widen the spaces of the faith - a service that we render to mankind.

Let us think of St. Paul. Recently, I re-examined more deeply his missionary motivation. I spoke to the Curia about it in our end-of-the-year encounter. He was motivated by the words of the Lord in his eschatological sermon: before any happening, before the return of the Son of God, the Gospel must first be preached to all men. A condition so that the world may reach its perfection, its opening to Paradise, is that the Gospel is announced to everyone.

He put all his missionary zeal to that the Gospel could reach everyone possible in his generation, in answer to the Lord's commandment to announce it to all men. His desire was not so much to baptize all men, as to make the Gospel present in the world, and therefore, to fulfill history as such.

I think that today, seeing how history is going, we can better understand that this presence of the Word of God, that the announcement of it reaches everyone to act as a ferment, is necessary so that the world can achieve its purpose.

In this sense, yes, we desire the conversion of everyone, but let us allow the Lord himself to act. What is important is that whoever wants to convert has the possibility to do so, and that this light of the Lord may appear in the world for everyone as a point of reference, as a light that helps, without which the world cannot find itself.

I do not know if I have explained myself well enough: dialog and mission not only do not exclude each other, but one requires the other.


#6 Fr. Alberto Orlando
Parish Vicar, Santa Maria Madre della Provvidenza

I am Don Alberto Orlando, vicar of the parish of Santa Maria Madre della Provvidenza.

I wish to tell you about a difficulty that I experience in Loreto with the youth last year. We had a beautiful day in Loreto, but among so many beautiful things, we noticed a certain distance between you adn the young people.

We arrived in the afternoon, and we were unable to settle ourselves properly, nor to see anything, nor to hear anything. Then in the evening, you left, and we were left at the mercy of TV, which in a way used us. But young people need human warmth.

One girl told me: 'Normally the Pope calls us 'dear young people', but today he called us 'young friends'" And he was very happy with that. But why don't you underscore more this detail, this closeness? Even the TV link to Loreto was very cold, very distant. And even the moment of prayer had its problems because the places that had the broadcast weer closed until quite late, in fact until after the broadcast was over.

The second thing that created some problem was the liturgy the following day, which was a bit heavy, especially because of the songs and the music. At the moment of the Alleluia, for instance, to give you an example, a girl noted that despite the heat, the songs and the music just took forever, as though nobody cared about the discomfort of everyone present. And those who complained were young people who go to Mass every Sunday.

So my two questions are: Why ever is there this distance between you and they? and then, how to reconcile the treasure of the liturgy in all its solemnity with the sentiment, the affection and the emotion that young people feel and which they need so much?

I also want some advice on how we can strike a balance between solemnity and emotion. Especially because we priests ourselves must often ask ourselves how capable are we of experiencing emotion and sentiment simply. Being ministers of the sacrament, we would like to be able to orient sentiment and emotion in the correct equilibrium.

The first point you raised has to do with the organizational situation. I find things as they are, so I do not know if it would have been possible to do something otherwise. Considering the thousands of persons who were present, I believe it was impossible to manage that we could all be as close together in the same way. That is why, we also went through the assembly in the car (Popemobile), in order to be closer to more individuals. But we will take note of this, and we will see if, in the future, during a meeting involving thousand and thousand of people, it would be possible to do something else.

In any case, I think it is important that it is the feeling of interior closeness that grows, that I can find a bridge to unite us all even if locally distant.

A great problem, however, is liturgical celebrations when masses of people are present. I remember that in 1960, during an international eucharistic congress in Munich, there was an attempt to give a new face to eucharistic congresses, which up to then, had simply been acts of adoration. The intention was to place the Eucharistic celebration at the center to emphasize the presence of the mystery being celebrated.

But then the question arose how that could be done. They said, adoring can be done from a distance; but to celebrate Mass, one needs a limited community that can interact with the mystery, a community that should be an assembly around the celebration of a mystery. So there were many who opposed celebrating a Mass for 100,000 persons. They said it was not possible because of the very structure of the mass itself, which required people in communion with each other. Among those who opposed were important personalities, very respectable ones.

Then Professor Jungmann, a great liturgist, and one of the great architects of the subsequent liturgical reform, came up with the concept of a statio orbis, after the idea of the statio Romae where during Lent, the faithful gathered at a certain point, the statio - therefore, they were stationed at certain points, like soldiers for Christ, and then they all come together for the Eucharist. He said that if the city of Rome could have its statio, where the faithful of the city could assemble, then we were going to have a statio orbis - a station for the world.

And from that time on, we had Eucharistic celebrations with mass participation. I must say that it remains a [problem for me, because concrete communion in the celebration is fundamental, and so I don't think the definitive answer has been found. I also raised this question at the last Bishops' Synod, but no answer was found.

I also had a second question: about concelebrations en masse. When, for example, a thousand priests are concelebrating, we don't know if we still have the structure intended by the Lord. In nay case,t hese are questions.

In the same way, you encountered a problem with taking part in a Mass in which it was not possible for everyone to be similarly involved. Therefore, one must choose a certain style to preserve that dignity that is always necessary for the Eucharist, even when the community is not uniform and the experience of participation is so diverse, and for some, really inadequate. But this does not depend on me; there are people who are in charge of the preparations.

Therefore, what to do in such situations must be thought about more,how to respond to the challenges of such occasions. In Loreto, if I am not mistaken, it was an orchestra of handicapped people who performed at Mass, and perhaps the idea was to show that even handicapped people can be principals during a sacred rite, in which not only are they not excluded but become primary agents. This way, with love for everyone, no one feels left out, everyone feels involved. I think that is a very thoughtful consideration which I share. Still, the fundamental problem remains [about the proper way to celebrate Mass en masse].

But I think that, knowing what the Eucharist is, even if one does not have the chance to participate in the external activity as one would wish in order to feel one is fully participating, we should be in it with our heart, as an ancient commandment of the Church says, created perhaps precisely for those who found themselves behind or outside the basilica: "Lift up your hearts! Now, let us all come out of ourselves, so we can all be together with the Lord."

As I said, I don't deny the problem you raise, but if we really follow the words to lift up our hearts, we will all find, even in situations that are difficult and even questionable, true and active participation.

[I must say I find the priest's 'questions' rather petulant, and almost rude, or at least, out of place. They were complaints, more than they were questions, and he was complaining even about petty things like poor TV links and lack of access to a place where they could watch TV, which the Pope has nothing to do with.

On the basis of his limited experience with the young people was with - out of half a million who were in Loreto, and although he could not cite a specific individual complaint (the one quotation he makes was not negative, and he himself says the girl was very happy) - the priest all but accused the Pope of being cold and distant, and the organizers of bungling their job because it was hot and uncomfortable during the Mass.

Does anyone really go to any of these huge public Masses expecting to be comfortable? Don't we all expect to wait for hours beforehand to assure oneself of a place, and then know that the Mass itself will not always be 'ideal', but what we get out of the Mass also depends on what we ourselves put into it.

I am glad the Pope set him right about the impossibility of being phsyically close to everyone during a mass event and about the fact that the music the priest complained about was provided by an orchestra of handicapped.

Also, the information he gave on the 1960 discussions in Munich about considerations for a Mass involving thousands of people - its propriety and the problem of concelebration - was quite eye-opening. I always took it for granted that such public Masses were 'simply' numerical expansions of a Mass held inside a church. And how typical for him to continue to be concerned about these points!]

This is the final installment of the encounter.






#7 Monsignor Renzo Martinelli
Delegate of the Pontifical Academy of the Immaculate Conception


Holy Father, I wish first of all to thank you for the explicit messages you made at the Angelus last Sunday about your prayer intentions, because we always seek to educate the faithful to pray for the Pope, and when you tell us to pray for the men and women in consecrated life, to pray for the Day for Life, to pray to obtain the fruits of penance during Lent, then these specifications favor interior communion with you and a more evident awareness of your intentions. And also, these days, about the grace of praying to the Immaculate Conception with the anniversary of the Lourdes apparitions.

On the problem of the 'educative emergency', this is my question: You recently asked the Slovenian bishops, "If, for instance, man is thought of only in the individualistic way, according to a widespread tendency today", then how can one justify efforts to construct a just and fraternal community?

But about this individualistic mentality - I entered the seminary at age 11, and I was educated in the mentality that first there was my 'I' and next to it some other's "I' in order to teach us, a bit moralistically, to conform to Christ's commandment, and ultimately making me feel that my freedom was managed as if I were a slave, as you say in your book on Jesus (???), as slavery the way the older brother felt in the parable of the prodigal son.

All this creates a division: How to propose to young people what you have always insisted, namely that the Christian 'I', once invested by Christ, is no longer 'I'. You said in Verona that the "i" is no longer 'I' because now there also is the communitarian subject of Christ.

How then would Your Holiness propose this change, this new modality, this Christian innovation of being a communion that can effectively propose the Christian experience?


It's the big question that every priest who is responsible for others must ask every day. And that includes me, of course.

It is true that in the 20th century, there was a tendency to individualistic devotion, to save above all one's soul and earn merits that were even calculable - they could be rated with numbers on some lists! And of course, Vatican-II intended to overcome such individualism.

I do not wish to judge the preceding generations which, in their own way, sought to serve their fellowmen. But there was the risk that when the intention was mainly to save one's own soul, the consequence was the extrinsic expression of piety which ultimately found faith as a weight rather than a liberation.

Certainly, the new pastoral ministry taught by the Second Vatican Council is to get out of this very restricted vision of Christianity and to discover that I can save my soul only by giving it freely, as the Gospel tells us today, that only by liberating me from myself, getting out of myself, as God made his Son come out of himself to save us.

And so, we must seek to get out of ourselves in order to know where we need to go. And doing so, we will not fall into a void, but let us allow ourselves, abandoning ourselves to the Lord, to be at his disposal, as he wants, not as we think we should.

That is true Christian obedience, which is freedom: Not as I want, with my own plan for life, but placing myself at his disposal, so that he may dispose of me. Placing himself in his hands, I am free.

It is a great leap, however, which is never done once and for all. I am thinking of St. Augustine who said so more than once. Initially, after his conversion, he thought he had arrived at the peak and to live ever after in the Paradise of being Christian.

Then he discovered that the difficult journey of life continued, even if from then on, it would be done with the light of God, but that every day, one had to make this leap out of oneself - to give up the 'I' so that it would die and be renewed in the great 'I of Christ which is, in a certain sense, very real, in the common 'I' of us all, our 'I'.

We ourselves, in the very celebration of the Eucharist - which is a great and profound encounter with the Lord in which I allow myself to fall into his hands - should take this great leap. The more we learn to do this, the more we can express it to others and make it understandable and accessible to them.

Only by going with the Lord, abandoning myself in the communion of the Church, not living for myself - neither for a happy life on earth nor for personal beatitude - but making myself 'an instrument of his peace', can I live well and learn the the courage to face the challenges of every day, always new and serious, and often almost unrealizable. Here I am as you wish, Lord - that way, everything will be well.

We can only pray to the Lord to help us through the day, and in this way, to help us enlighten others and motivate them so that they too may feel free and redeemed.


What a wonderful and typically Ratzingerian priestly advice! The Holy Father always presents so clearly the difference between the Christian overcoming of the 'I' and giving it up to Christ, and the Buddhist and Hindu dissolution of the 'I' into the impersonal cosmos.


#8 Don Paolo Tammi
Parish Priest of San Pio X, and religious instructor

I wish to extend to you just one of the many thanks for the effort and the passion with which you wrote your book JESUS OF NAZARETH, a text which as you yourself said is not an act of Magisterium but your own personal quest for the face of God.

You have contributed to bring back the person of Jesus Christ to the center of Christianity, and are certainly contributing to a correct judgment of partial visions of the Christian event, such as the political context which dominated my adolescence and that of my contemporaries; or the moralistic - about which I have felt Catholic preaching to be too insistent; and finally, that which calls itself a demythifying of the figure of Christ carried on by some leaders of secular thought who, not surprisingly, have suddenly concerned themselves with the founder of Christianity and his human existence in order to deny his historicity or attribute his divinity to a fantasy of the Apostolic Church.

Instead, Holiness, you have not stopped teaching us that Christ is truly everything, that one can only be enamored of him, man and God - and that this is not the same as merely belonging to Christianity as to a political party, or to save a cultural identity.

I would add that in a secular environment like the school, where the historical and philosophical reasons for or against religion obviously have legitimate room, I see young people every day who keep a great emotional distance (from religion), whereas I have seen other young people react emotionally in Assisi, where I accompanied some of them recently, as they listened to the testimony of a young minor friar .

I ask you: How can a priest make his life more passionately involved in the essential which is in this case, his spouse Jesus? And how can one see that a priest is indeed enamored of Christ? I know that Your Holiness has addressed this question many times before, but an answer can always help us to correct ourselves and to recover hope. So I ask you to please answer again, for your priests.

How can I correct parish priests who work so hard and so well! But we can help each other reciprocally.

So you have a knowledge of this secular environment, but are also able to keep not only intellectual distance but also the emotional distance of faith. We should, according to circumstances, find ways to build bridges. I think the situation is difficult, but you are right. We should always think: What is essential? - even if there will be differences about the kerygma, or how to proclaim Christ's teachings.

The question must always be: What is essential? What must be discovered? What do I wish to transmit? And I always say: the essential is God. If we do not speak of God, if God is not discovered, then we will always be stuck with secondary things.

And so I think it is fundamental that at the very least, the question arises: Is there God? And how can I live without God? Is God a reality that is truly important to me?

I was always impressed that Vatican-I expressly wished to establish this dialog, to understand God rationally - even if in the historical situation in which we find ourselves, we also need God to help purify our reason. I thought that even then, there was already an attempt to respond to the secular challenge, with God as the fundamental question and Christ as God's definitive answer.

Of course, I will point out that there are the preambula fidei][the rational premises of the faith, a phrase from Thomas Aquinas, which are perhaps the first step to open the heart and mind to God, in the form of the natural virtues.

Recently, I was visited by a head of state who told me, "I am not religious. The foundation of my life is Aristotelian ethics". That is a good thing in itself - he is already in step with St. Thomas, towards Thomas's synthesis.

That is why this can be a point to hook on to: to learn and to make understandable the importance for human coexistence of an ethical rationale, which if it is truly lived consistently, opens to the question about God, and of one's responsibility before God.

Therefore, we should be clear about what is the essential thing that we want to and should transmit to others, as well as to what could be the premises or situations in which we can take the first step to transmit it. Certainly, these days, the fundamental step is a certain education in ethics. That was the case even in early Christianity.

Cyprian, for instance, tells us that at first he had a totally dissolute life; then, living among catechumens, he learned a fundamental ethic, and that is how the road to God opened up for him.

Even St. Ambrose, at the Easter Vigil [during which catechumens were traditionally baptized], said: "Up to now, we have spoken of morals. Now, we come to the mysteries." The catechumens had made the journey into the preambula fidei through a fundamental education in ethics, which gave them the disposition to understand the mystery of God.

So I would say that we should create an interaction between ethical education - so important today, even for pragmatic purposes - and the question of God, which we must not leave out. I think that in the inter-penetration of these two objectives, we may perhaps succeed in opening the way to God who alone can give light.



#9 Fr. Daniele Salera
Parish Vicar of Santa Maria Madre del Redentore at Tor Bella Monaca,
Religion instructor

Holiness, I am Don Daniele Salera, a priest for six years now, parochial vicar in Tor Bella Monaca and a religious instructor there. In reading your letter to the diocese on our urgent task in education, I noted some aspects important for me which I would like to ask you about.

Above all, I find it significant that you addressed yourself to the diocese and to the city of Rome. This distinction recognizes the different entities which are involved, and through which Your Holiness also addresses even non-believers.

I wish also to convey to you in these brief moments the beauty I find in working in a school with colleagues who, for various reasons, no longer have an active faith nor even acknowledge themselves to be in the Church at all, but who are examples for me of passion in educating young people and in recovering adolescents who already have their lives marked by crime and degradation.

I find in so many persons with which I work in Tor Bella Monaca a true and proper missionary desire. In different but converging ways, we are all fighting the crisis of hope which is always around the corner when one is working with young people who already seem to be interiorly dead, without a desire for the future, and so profoundly gripped by evil that they can no longer even see good will for them, nor the occasions for freedom and redemption that are available for them.

In the face of such a human emergency, there is no room for divisions, so I often repeat to myself a statement by Papa Roncalli who said: "I will always seek that which unites, rather than that which divides."

Holiness, it is my experience to live daily in contact with children and adults whom I would never have met if I only concentrated on activities internal to the parish, and I know it is true that so many educators are renouncing ethics in the name of emotionality which cannot give certainties and which creates dependency. Others are afraid to defend the rules of civil coexistence because they think such rules do not recognize the needs, the difficulties, and the identity of young people.

In a slogan, I would say that on the educative level, we are living in a culture of 'ALWAYS SAY YES, NEVER NO'. And yet it is NO said with loving passion for man and his future that often marks the boundary between good and evil - a boundary which, in a person's developing years, is fundamental for creating a solid permanent identity.

I am therefore convinced that in the face of the educative emergency, differences should be attenuated so that on the educational level, we may truly find a common plane even with those who freely say they are not believers.

On the other hand, I ask myself why we in the Church who have written, thought and experienced so much about education as a training in the right use of freedom - as you have said - have not succeeded to make this evident in education. Why do we seem to be seen as barely free, much less liberating?


Thank you for this mirror into your experiences with the schools today, with young people today, and for the self-critical questions about we ourselves in the Church.

At this time, I can only say that I think it is very important that he Church be present even in the schools, because an education that is not at the same time an education with God and in the presence of God, an education that does not transmit the great ethical values that appear in the light of Christ, is not education.

Professional formation without formation of the heart is never enough. And the heart cannot be formed without at least being challenged by the presence of God.

We know that many young people live in environments and situations that make the light and the Word of God inaccessible to them. And they are therefore in situations which constitute a true slavery, and not simply externally, because they also bring intellectual slavery which truly darkens the heart and the mind.

We are seeking with all the possibilities available to the Church to offer them a way out. In any case, we should try that the Word of God may be present even in the diverse atmosphere of a school - where one has believers as well as the saddest cases.

As we said about St. Paul earlier, he wanted the Gospel to reach everyone. This commandment of the Lord - proclaim the Gospel to all - is not a diachronic imperative, nor a continental order that should be announced as a priority in all cultures. It is an interior imperative, in the sense that one must enter the different structures and nuances of a society in order to make more accessible at least a ray of light from the Gospel, and thus to truly announce the Gospel to all.

I think that should also be an aspect of cultural formation today. To know what is that Christian faith which shaped this continent and which is a light for all the continents.

There are different ways in which this light can be made present and accessible to the maximum, and I know I do not have a formula for it. But the need to offer ourselves to this beautiful and difficult adventure is truly an element of the Gospel imperative itself.

Let us pray that the Lord may help us ever more to respond to this imperative in order to bring to our society a knowledge of him in all his dimensions, a knowledge of his face.



#10 Fr. Umberto Fanfarillo
Parish Priest of Santa Dorotea in Trastevere


Holy Father, I am the parish priest of Santa Dorotea in Trastevere. My name is Fr. Umberto Fanfarillo, a conventual Franciscan.

Togetter with the Christian community of my parish, I wish to acknowledge the conspicuous even if not prfound presence of other religious elements whom we meet daily in reciprocal esteem, acqwuaintance and respectful coexistence.

In this substantially positive context, I would also wish to mention the commitment of the Accademia dei Lincei, of the John Cabot University, which has more than 800 students from some 60 countries with religious affiliations ranging from Catholic to Lutheran, Jewish and Muslim.

It is precisely these young people who, upon the death of John Paul II, gathered in our church for prayer. Some of them, who have visited our parish facilities often, express respect and feeling a sense of ease with our religious symbols like the Crucifix and the images of Mary, the saints and the Pope.

Within the Parish, there is a Peter Pan House, affiliated with the Bambino Gesu Hospital, which takes care of children afflicted with cancer. But even here, inter-religiosity is seen in great moments of charity and religious attention to sick and needy brothers. A similar reality is found in the Regina Caeli prison, also within our parish territory.

Recently, in an atmosphere of respect and testimony, the sacrament of confirmation was conferred on two young Anglicans who have become Catholics. I think that similar examples can be found in all the centers of hospitality that characterize the district of Trastevere.

Holy Father, we are all in search of new and more balanced attitudes of (inter-religious) recognition and respect. We have alwayys appreciated your interventions marked by respect and the spirit of dialog in the search for truth. Help us more with your words.


Thank you for this testimonial of a parish which is truly multi-dimensional and multi-cultural.

I think that you have concretized quite a bit of what we discussed earlier with our Indian brother: this coming together of dialog and respectful coexistence, with reciprocal respect and acceptance of others in their otherness.

At the same time, there is the presence of Christianity, the Christian faith as a point of reference, which everyone can look at, as a ferment which - even while respecting everyone's freedom - is a light for everyone despite other differences.

Let us hope that the Lord may always help us to accept others in their otherness, to respect them, and to make Christ present in acts of love, which is the true expression of his presence and his Word. Thus, may he help us to be truly ministers of Christ and his salvation of the world.

Thank you.

Here is the ZENIT translation of the Holy Father's address to participants of the international conference that marked the 20th anniversary of the publication of Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem.


Dear Brothers and Sisters!

With true pleasure I welcome all of you who are taking part in the international conference on the theme "Man and Woman: The ‘Humanum' in Its Entirety," which has been organized on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the publication of the apostolic letter "Mulieris Dignitatem."

I greet Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and I am grateful to him for being the interpreter of shared sentiments. I greet the council's secretary, Bishop Josef Clemens, and the members and the collaborators of this dicastery. In particular I greet the women, who are the great majority of those present, and who have enriched the conference's proceedings with their experience and competence.

The question on which you are reflecting has great contemporary relevance: From the second half of the 20th century until today, the movement for women's rights in the various settings of social life has generated countless reflections and debates, and it has seen the multiplication of many initiatives that the Catholic Church has followed and often accompanied with attentive interest.

The male-female relationship, in its respective specificity, reciprocity and complementarity, without a doubt constitutes a central point of the "anthropological question" that is so decisive in contemporary culture. The papal interventions and documents that have touched on the emerging reality of the question of women are numerous.

I limit myself to recall those of my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II, who, in June 1995 wrote a "Letter to Women," and in Aug. 15, 1988, exactly 20 years ago, published the apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem.

This text on the vocation and the dignity of women, of great theological, spiritual and cultural richness, in its turn inspired the "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World" of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In Mulieris Dignitatem, John Paul II wanted to delve into the fundamental anthropological truths of men and women, the equality in dignity and their unity, the rooted and profound difference between the masculine and the feminine and their vocation to reciprocity and complementarity, collaboration and communion (cf. "Mulieris Dignitatem," No. 6).

This dual-unity of man and woman is based on the foundation of the dignity of every person, created in the image and likeness of God, who "created them male and female" (Genesis 1:27), as much avoiding an indistinct uniformity and flattened-out and impoverished equality as an abysmal and conflictive difference (cf. "Letter to Women," No. 8).

This dual-unity carries with it, inscribed in bodies and souls, the relation with the other, love for the other, interpersonal communion that shows that "the creation of man is also marked by a certain likeness to the divine communion" ("Mulieris Dignitatem," No. 7).

When, therefore, men or women pretend to be autonomous or totally self-sufficient, they risk being closed up in a self-realization that considers the overcoming of every natural, social or religious bond as a conquest of freedom, but which in fact reduces them to an oppressive solitude. To foster and support the true promotion of women and men one cannot fail to take this reality into account.

Certainly a renewed anthropological research is necessary that, on the basis of the great Christian tradition, incorporates the new advances of science and the datum of contemporary cultural sensibilities, contributing in this way to the deepened understanding not only of feminine identity but also masculine identity, which is frequently the object of partial and ideological reflections.

In the face of cultural and political currents that attempt to eliminate, or at least to obfuscate and confuse, the sexual differences written into human nature, considering them to be cultural constructions, it is necessary to recall the design of God that created the human being male and female, with a unity and at the same time an original and complementary difference.

Human nature and the cultural dimension are integrated in an ample and complex process that constitutes the formation of the identity of each, where both dimensions -- the feminine and the masculine -- correspond to and complete each other.

Opening the work of the 5th General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopate last May in Brazil, I recalled how there still persists a macho mentality that ignores the novelty of Christianity, which recognizes and proclaims the equal dignity and responsibility of women with respect to men.

There are certain places and cultures where women are discriminated against and undervalued just for the fact that they are women, where recourse is even had to religious arguments and family, social and cultural pressures to support the disparity between the sexes, where there is consumption of acts of violence against women, making them into objects of abuse and exploitation in advertising and in the consumer and entertainment industries.

In the face of such grave and persistent phenomena the commitment of Christians appears all the more urgent, so that they become everywhere the promoters of a culture that recognizes the dignity that belongs to women in law and in reality.

God entrusts to women and to men, according to the characteristics that are proper to each, a specific vocation in the mission of the Church and in the world.

I think here of the family, community of love, open to life, fundamental cell of society. In it, woman and man, thanks to the gift of maternity and paternity, together play an irreplaceable role in regard to life. From the moment of their conception, children have a right to count on a father and a mother who care for them and accompany them in their growth.

The state, for its part, must sustain with adequate social policies all that which promotes the stability of matrimony, the dignity and the responsibility of the husband and wife, their rights and irreplaceable duty to educate their children. Moreover, it is necessary that it be made possible for the woman to cooperate in the building-up of society, appreciating her typical "feminine genius."

Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you once more for your visit and, while I wish you complete success in the work of the conference, I assure you of a remembrance in prayer, invoking the maternal intercession of Mary, that she help the women of our time to realize their vocation and their mission in the ecclesial and civil community.

With such vows, I impart to you here present and to your loved ones a special apostolic blessing.

[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]


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ADDRESS TO THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
OF THE ITALIAN FEDERATION OF SPIRITUAL EXERCISES (FIES)
Clementine Hall
Saturday, 9 February 2008

This is the official Vatican translation:

Your Eminence,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am please to meet you at the conclusion of the National Assembly of the Italian Federation of Spiritual Exercises (FIES). I greet the President, Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, and I thank him for the kinds words with which he conveyed your sentiments.

I greet the Bishops, Delegates of the Regional Bishops' Conferences, Members of the Board and the National Council, the Regional and Diocesan Delegates, the Directors of some Retreat Centres and the leaders of Retreats for young people.

The theme of your Assembly: "For an authentically Eucharistic Christian spirituality", you have taken from my invitation addressed to all the Church's Pastors at the conclusion of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (cf. n. 94), which has been at the centre of the various presentations and study groups.

This theme's choice shows how you take to heart and accept, in a spirit of faith, the Pope's Magisterium in order to integrate it into your study initiatives and to correctly translate it into pastoral praxis. For this same reason, in your work you have kept in mind the two Encyclicals Deus Caritas Est and Spe Salvi.

The FIES Statute clearly states that its goal is to "make known and promote Spiritual Exercises in all possible ways, and with respect to their canonical norms, understood as a strong experience of God, in a climate of listening to the Word of God, to foster conversion and an ever more complete giving to Christ and to the Church" (art. 2).

This is why it "freely unites its adherents in Italy, who practise the Spiritual Exercises in the context of the pastoral work of the times of the Spirit" (ibid.).

Your Federation therefore intends to increase spirituality as the foundation and soul of all pastoral care. It is born and grows by treasuring the Exhortations on the necessity of prayer and the primacy of the spiritual life continually offered by my venerable Predecessors, the Servants of God Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II.

Following in their footsteps, I too wished, in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, "to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable works" (n. 37), and in Spe Salvi I placed prayer first among the ""settings' for learning and practising hope" (cf. nn. 32-34). Indeed, insistence on the necessity of prayer is always timely and urgent.

In Italy, while multiple spiritual initiatives providentially increase and spread primarily among youth, it seems instead that the number of those who participate in true courses of Spiritual Exercises decreases, and this can also be verified among priests and members of Institutes of Consecrated Life.

It is thus worth remembering that "Retreats" are an experience of the spirit with proper and specific characteristics, well summarized in one of your definitions which I gladly recall: "A strong experience of God, awakened by listening to his Word, understood and welcomed in one's personal life, under the action of the Holy Spirit, which, in a climate of silence, prayer and by means of a spiritual guide, offer the capacity of discernment in order to purify the heart, convert one's life, follow Christ and fulfil one's own mission in the Church and in the world".

Along with other forms of spiritual retreat it is good that participation in the Spiritual Exercises does not slacken, characterized by that climate of complete and profound silence which favours the personal and communitarian encounter with God and the contemplation of the Face of Christ. My Predecessors and I myself have returned to this point several times, and it can never be insisted upon enough.

In an age when the influence of secularization is always more powerful and, on the other hand, one senses a diffused need to encounter God, may the possibility to offer spaces for intense listening to his Word in silence and prayer always be available. Houses of Spiritual Exercises are especially privileged places for this spiritual experience, and they thus must be materially maintained and staffed by competent personnel.

I encourage the Pastors of the various communities to be concerned with this so that Houses of Spiritual Exercises never lack responsible and well-formed workers, guides and leaders who are open and prepared, gifted with those doctrinal and spiritual qualities that make them true teachers of spirituality, experts and lovers of God's Word and faithful to the Church's Magisterium.

A good course of Spiritual Exercises contributes to renewing in those who participate in it a joy of and taste for the Liturgy, in particular of the dignified celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours and above all, the Eucharist.

It helps one rediscover the importance of the Sacrament of Penance, it opens the way to conversion and the gift of reconciliation, as well as to the value and meaning of Eucharistic Adoration. The full and authentic sense of the Holy Rosary and of the pious practice of the Way of the Cross can also be beneficially recovered during the Exercises.

Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you for the precious service that you render to the Church and for the commitment you extend so that in Italy the "network" of Spiritual Exercises is always more widespread and qualified.

On my part I assure you of a remembrance to the Lord, while, invoking the intercession of Mary Most Holy, I impart the Apostolic Blessing to all of you and to your collaborators.

2/19/08 ADDRESS TO RELIGIOUS SUPERIORS

Here is the text of teh address delivered in English by the Holy
Father at the presentation of credentials by the new Ambassodr to the Holy See from Serbia, H.E. Vladeta Jankovic.


Your Excellency,

I am pleased to welcome you at the start of your mission and to accept the Letters accrediting you as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Serbia to the Holy See.

I thank you for your kind words and for the greetings you bring from President Boris Tadić. Please convey to him my respectful good wishes on the occasion of his recent re-election, and the assurance of my prayers for all the people of your nation.

The Holy See greatly values its diplomatic links with Serbia, and hopes thereby to offer encouragement to the continuing efforts to build a future of peace, prosperity, reconciliation and peaceful coexistence throughout the region, as Serbia and its neighbours seek to take their proper place within Europe.

Few countries in the continent of Europe escaped the ravages of war in the last century, and all can learn from the lessons of the recent past. As you work towards a more secure future, it is vital to remember that the identity and the rich cultural tradition of your nation, as of all European nations, is deeply rooted in the heritage of Christian faith and the Gospel of love.

"There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love" (Deus Caritas Est, 28). The followers of Christ are called to offer that service of love to all their brothers and sisters without distinction: only in this way can long-standing tensions finally be laid to rest.

Thus it is that, if we choose to live by the values drawn from our Christian roots, we discover the courage to forgive and to accept forgiveness, to be reconciled with our neighbours and to build together a civilization of love in which all are accepted and respected.

I know how deeply the Serb people have suffered in the course of recent conflicts and I wish to express my heartfelt concern for them and for the other Balkan nations affected by the sad events of the last decade.

The Holy See shares your earnest desire that the peace which has been achieved will bring lasting stability to the region. In particular, with regard to the current crisis in Kosovo, I call upon all interested parties to act with prudence and moderation, and to seek solutions that favour mutual respect and reconciliation.

Not least among the various divisions between the peoples of Europe are those resulting from the tragic loss of Christian unity over the past thousand years. I rejoice in the progress that has been made in relations between Orthodox and Catholic Christians, and I am especially grateful to the Serbian Orthodox Church for graciously hosting the 2006 meeting of the mixed commission for theological dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox, with the active support of senior members of your Government.

Indeed there have been many hopeful developments in this area, encouraged by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, including the recent joint initiatives between the Pontifical Lateran University and the Orthodox Theology Faculty of the Patriarchate of Serbia in Belgrade, to which Your Excellency has made reference.

I earnestly hope that these positive developments will continue to bear fruit, in particular through joint exploration of Christian social doctrine, and in this regard I gratefully recall the welcome accorded to Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, on his recent visit to the Orthodox Theology Faculty.

Serbia’s geographical location on the border between Eastern and Western Christianity gives her a unique opportunity to promote ecumenical dialogue, while her familiarity with Islam, both through her encounter with the Ottoman Empire and through the presence of many Muslims in the region today, opens up rich possibilities for progress in inter-religious dialogue.

Both of these processes are of the utmost importance in establishing greater mutual understanding and respect between peoples and nations in the modern world.

Be assured that the Catholic Church in Serbia is eager to build further on its good relations with the Holy Synod and to play its part in joint initiatives designed to foster Christian unity and a genuine rapprochement between the adherents of different religions, contributing in this way to the building of peace and harmony within and between nations.

Freedom of religion is an indispensable element in building the kind of society in which such harmony can develop, and the steps taken by Serbia in recent years to guarantee this fundamental human right are greatly appreciated.

The plan to restore to Churches and religious communities property which had been nationalized by the Yugoslav Federation and the introduction of religious teaching in schools have contributed to the spiritual renewal of your country, and in this regard an important example has been given from which other governments can learn.

I pray that this openness to religious values in society will continue to grow, so that public debate may be truly nourished by the principles derived from faith. As I indicated in the lecture that I prepared recently for "La Sapienza" University in Rome (17 January 2008), if reason "becomes deaf to the great message that comes to it from Christian faith and wisdom, then it withers like a tree whose roots can no longer reach the waters that give it life."

Without the nourishment that comes from living faith, culture is deeply impoverished and prospects for a truly humane civilization rapidly recede.

Your Excellency, I pray that the diplomatic mission which you begin today will further strengthen the good relations that exist between the Holy See and your country.

I assure you that the various departments of the Roman Curia are always ready to offer help and support in the fulfilment of your duties. With my sincere good wishes, I invoke upon you, your family, and all the people of Serbia, God’s abundant blessings.

Here is a translation provided by the Jesuit site of the Holy Father's address to the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus:


Dear Fathers of the General Congregation
of the Society of Jesus,

I am happy to welcome you today as your demanding work is coming to an end. I thank the new Superior General Father Adolfo Nicolás, for having conveyed your feelings and your effort to respond to the expectations that the Church places in you.

I referred to them in the message addressed to Reverend Father Kolvenbach and – through him – to your Congregation at the beginning of your labours. I thank Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach once again for the precious service he has rendered to your Order for almost a quarter century.

I also greet the members of the new General Counsel and the Assistants who will help the Superior in his delicate task of religious and apostolic guidance of your Society.

Your Congregation takes place in a period of great social, economic and political changes, sharp ethical, cultural and environmental problems, conflicts of all kinds, but also of a more intense communication among peoples, of new possibilities of acquaintance and dialogue, of a deep longing for peace. All these are situations that challenge the Catholic Church and its ability to announce to our contemporaries the Word of hope and salvation.

I very much hope, therefore, that the entire Society of Jesus, thanks to the results of your Congregation, will be able to live with a renewed drive and fervour the mission for which the Spirit brought it about and has kept it for more than four centuries and a half with an extraordinary abundance of apostolic fruit.

Today I should like to encourage you and your confreres to go on in the fulfilment of your mission, in full fidelity to your original charism, in the ecclesial and social context that characterizes this beginning of the millennium.

As my predecessors have often told you, the Church needs you, counts on you, and continues to turn to you with confidence, particularly to reach the geographical and spiritual places where others do not reach or find it difficult to reach.

Those words of Paul VI have remained engraved in your hearts: “Wherever in the Church, even in the most difficult and exposed fields, in the crossroads of ideologies, in the social trenches, there has been or is confrontation between the burning exigencies of humanity and the perennial message of the Gospel, there have been and are the Jesuits” (3 December 1974, to the 32nd General Congregation).

As the Formula of your Institute states, the Society of Jesus was founded chiefly “for the defence and propagation of the faith”. At a time when new geographical horizons were being opened, Ignatius’s first companions placed themselves at the Pope’s disposal “so that he might use them where he judged it would be for God’s greater glory and the good of souls” (Autobiography, n. 85).

They were thus sent to announce the Lord to peoples and cultures that did not know him as yet. They did so with a courage and zeal that still remain as an example and inspiration: the name of St. Francis Xavier is the most famous of all, but how many others could be mentioned!

Nowadays the new peoples who do not know the Lord or know him badly, so that they do not recognize him as the Saviour, are far away not so much from the geographical point of view as from the cultural one. The obstacles challenging the evangelisers are not so much the seas or the long distances as the frontiers that, due to a mistaken or superficial vision of God and of man, are raised between faith and human knowledge, faith and modern science, faith and the fight for justice.

This is why the Church is in urgent need of people of solid and deep faith, of a serious culture and a genuine human and social sensitivity, of religious priests who devote their lives to stand on those frontiers in order to witness and help to understand that there is in fact a profound harmony between faith and reason, between evangelical spirit, thirst for justice and action for peace.

Only thus will it be possible to make the face of the Lord known to so many for whom it remains hidden or unrecognisable. This must therefore be the preferential task of the Society of Jesus.

Faithful to its best tradition, it must continue to form its members with great care in science and virtue, not satisfied with mediocrity, because the task of facing and entering into a dialogue with very diverse social and cultural contexts and the different mentalities of today’s world is one of the most difficult and demanding.

This search for quality and human solidity, spiritual and cultural, must also characterize all the many activities of formation and education of the Jesuits, as it meets the most diverse kinds of persons wherever they are.

In its history the Society of Jesus has lived extraordinary experiences of proclamation and encounter between the Gospel and the cultures of the world – suffice it to think of Matteo Ricci in China, Roberto de Nobili in India, or the “Reductions” in Latin America – of which you are justly proud.

Today I feel I have the duty to exhort you to follow in the footsteps of your predecessors with the same courage and intelligence, but also with as profound a motivation of faith and passion to serve the Lord and his Church.

All the same, while you try to recognize the signs of the presence and work of God in every part of the world, even beyond the confines of the visible Church, while you endeavour to build bridges of understanding and dialogue with those who do not belong to the Church or who have difficulty accepting its position and message, you must at the same time loyally fulfil the fundamental duty of the Church, of fully adhering to the word of God, and of the authority of the Magisterium to preserve the truth and the unity of the Catholic doctrine in its totality.

This does not apply solely to the personal task of each Jesuit; since you work as members of one apostolic body, you must be attentive so that your works and institutions always maintain a clear and explicit identity, so that the purpose of your apostolic work does not become ambiguous or obscure, and many other persons may share your ideals and join you effectively and enthusiastically, collaborating in your task of serving God and humanity.

As you well know because you have so often made the meditation “of the Two Standards” in the Spiritual Exercises under the guidance of St Ignatius, our world is the stage of a battle between good and evil, with powerful negative forces at work, which cause those dramatic situations of spiritual and material subjection of our contemporaries against which you have repeatedly declared your wish to combat, working for the service of the faith and the promotion of justice.

These forces show themselves today in many forms, but with particular evidence through cultural tendencies that often become dominating, such as subjectivism, relativism, hedonism, practical materialism.

This is why I have asked you to renew your interest in the promotion and defence of the Catholic doctrine “particularly in the neuralgic points strongly attacked today by secular culture”, some of which I have mentioned in my letter.

The issues, constantly discussed and questioned today, of the salvation in Christ of all human beings, of sexual morale, the marriage and the family, must be deepened and illumined in the context of contemporary reality, but keeping the harmony with the Magisterium, which avoids creating confusion and bewilderment among the People of God.

I know and understand well that this is a particularly sensitive and demanding point for you and not a few of your confreres, especially those engaged in theological research, interreligious dialogue and dialogue with contemporary culture.

Precisely for this reason I have invited you, and am inviting you today, to further reflect so as to find again the fullest sense of your characteristic “fourth vow” of obedience to the Successor of Peter, which not only implies readiness to being sent in mission to far away lands, but also – in the most genuine Ignatian sense of “feeling with the Church and in the Church – to “love and serve” the Vicar of Christ on earth with that “effective and affective” devotion that must make of you his precious and irreplaceable collaborators in his service of the universal Church.

At the same time I encourage you to continue and renew your mission among the poor and for the poor. Unfortunately new causes of poverty and exclusion are not lacking in a world marked by grave economic and environmental imbalances, processes of globalization, caused by selfishness rather than by solidarity, by devastating and absurd armed conflicts.

As I had the opportunity to repeat to the Latin American Bishops gathered in the Shrine of Aparecida, “the preferential option for the poor is implicit in the christological faith in a God that has made himself poor for us, so as to make us rich by his poverty” (2 Cor 8,9). [i.e., it was not 'an 'invention' or a 'new insight' by liberation theologians and other bleeding-hearts of the do-goodism school.]

It is therefore natural that whoever wishes to make himself a companion of Jesus, really share the love of the poor. For us the choice of the poor is not ideological but is born from the Gospel.

The situations of injustice and poverty in the world of today are countless and dramatic and it is necessary to try to understand and combat in the heart of man the deeper causes of the evil that separates him from God, without forgetting to meet the more urgent needs in the spirit of the charity of Christ.

Taking up one of the latest intuitions of Father Arrupe, your Society continues to engage in a meritorious way in the service of the refugees, who are often the poorest among the poor and need not only material help but also the deeper spiritual, human and psychological proximity especially proper to your service.

Finally I invite you to reserve a specific attention to the ministry of the Spiritual Exercises that has been characteristic of your Society from its origins.

The Exercises are the fountain of your spirituality and the matrix of your Constitutions, but they are also a gift that the Spirit of the Lord has made to the entire Church: it is for you to continue to make it a precious and efficacious instrument for the spiritual growth of souls, for their initiation to prayer, to meditation, in this secularised world in which God seems to be absent.

Just in the last week I have myself profited of the Spiritual Exercises together with my closest collaborators of the Roman Curia under the guidance of your outstanding confrere Cardinal Albert Vanhoye.

In a time such as today’s, in which the confusion and multiplicity of messages, the speed of changes and situations, make particularly difficult for our contemporaries to put their lives in order and respond with joy to the call that the Lord makes to everyone of us, the Spiritual Exercises represent a particularly precious method to seek and find God in us, around us and in everything, to know his will and put it into practice.

In this spirit of obedience to the will of God, to Jesus Christ, that becomes humble obedience to the Church, I invite you to continue and bring to conclusion the work of your Congregation, and I join you in the prayer that St Ignatius taught us in the Exercises – a prayer that seems to me too great to the point that I almost dare not say, but which all the same we must always propose to ourselves anew:

---

“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding
and my entire will, all I have and possess; you gave it to me, I now give it back to you, O Lord; all is yours, dispose of it according to your will; give me your love and your grace; that is enough for me” (Ex 234).

---

02/21 ADDRESS TO CIRCOLO SAN PIETRO

02/21 REMARKS AT DEDICATION OF PATIO TO ST GREGORY ILLUMINATOR

MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER
XLV WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR VOCATIONS


Dear brothers and sisters,

1. For the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, to be celebrated on 13 April 2008, I have chosen the theme: Vocations at the service of the Church on mission.

The Risen Jesus gave to the Apostles this command: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19), assuring them: “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28: 20).

The Church is missionary in herself and in each one of her members. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, every Christian is called to bear witness and to announce the Gospel, but this missionary dimension is associated in a special and intimate way with the priestly vocation.

In the covenant with Israel, God entrusted to certain men, called by him and sent to the people in his name, a mission as prophets and priests. He did so, for example, with Moses: “Come, - God told him - I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring forth my people … out of Egypt …when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you will serve God upon this mountain” (Ex 3: 10 and 12). The same happened with the prophets.

2. The promises made to our fathers were fulfilled entirely in Jesus Christ. In this regard, the Second Vatican Council says: “The Son, therefore, came, sent by the Father. It was in him, before the foundation of the world, that the Father chose us and predestined us to become adopted sons … To carry out the will of the Father, Christ inaugurated the kingdom of heaven on earth and revealed to us the mystery of that kingdom.

By his obedience he brought about redemption” (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 3). And Jesus already in his public life, while preaching in Galilee, chose some disciples to be his close collaborators in the messianic ministry.

For example, on the occasion of the multiplication of the loaves, he said to the Apostles: “You give them something to eat” (Mt 14: 16), encouraging them to assume the needs of the crowds to whom he wished to offer nourishment, but also to reveal the food “which endures to eternal life” (Jn 6: 27).

He was moved to compassion for the people, because while visiting cities and villages, he found the crowds weary and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (cf. Mt 9: 36). From this gaze of love came the invitation to his disciples: “Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest” (Mt 9: 38), and he sent the Twelve initially “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” with precise instructions.

If we pause to meditate on this passage of Matthew’s Gospel, commonly called the “missionary discourse”, we may take note of those aspects which distinguish the missionary activity of a Christian community, eager to remain faithful to the example and teaching of Jesus.

To respond to the Lord’s call means facing in prudence and simplicity every danger and even persecutions, since “a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Mt 10: 24).

Having become one with their Master, the disciples are no longer alone as they announce the Kingdom of heaven; Jesus himself is acting in them: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me” (Mt 10: 40).

Furthermore, as true witnesses, “clothed with power from on high” (Lk 24: 49), they preach “repentance and the forgiveness of sins” (Lk 24: 47) to all peoples.

3. Precisely because they have been sent by the Lord, the Twelve are called “Apostles”, destined to walk the roads of the world announcing the Gospel as witnesses to the death and resurrection of Christ.

Saint Paul, writing to the Christians of Corinth, says: “We – the Apostles – preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1: 23). The Book of the Acts of the Apostles also assigns a very important role in this task of evangelization to other disciples whose missionary vocation arises from providential, sometimes painful, circumstances such as expulsion from their own lands for being followers of Jesus (cf. 8,1-4).

The Holy Spirit transforms this trial into an occasion of grace, using it so that the name of the Lord can be preached to other peoples, stretching in this way the horizons of the Christian community.

These are men and women who, as Luke writes in the Acts of the Apostles, “have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ” (15: 26). First among them is undoubtedly Paul of Tarsus, called by the Lord himself, hence a true Apostle. The story of Paul, the greatest missionary of all times, brings out in many ways the link between vocation and mission.

Accused by his opponents of not being authorized for the apostolate, he makes repeated appeals precisely to the call which he received directly from the Lord (cf. Rom 1: 1; Gal 1: 11-12 and 15-17).

4. In the beginning, and thereafter, what “impels” the Apostles (cf. 2 Cor 5: 14) is always “the love of Christ”. Innumerable missionaries, throughout the centuries, as faithful servants of the Church, docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, have followed in the footsteps of the first disciples.

The Second Vatican Council notes: “Although every disciple of Christ, as far in him lies, has the duty of spreading the faith, Christ the Lord always calls whomever he will from among the number of his disciples, to be with him and to be sent by him to preach to the nations [cf. Mk 3: 13-15]” (Decree Ad Gentes, 23).

In fact, the love of Christ must be communicated to the brothers by example and words, with all one’s life. My venerable predecessor John Paul II wrote: “The special vocation of missionaries ‘for life’ retains all its validity: it is the model of the Church's missionary commitment, which always stands in need of radical and total self-giving, of new and bold endeavours”. (Encyclical Redemptoris Missio, 66)

5. Among those totally dedicated to the service of the Gospel, are priests, called to preach the word of God, administer the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, committed to helping the lowly, the sick, the suffering, the poor, and those who experience hardship in areas of the world where there are, at times, many who still have not had a real encounter with Jesus Christ.

Missionaries announce for the first time to these people Christ’s redemptive love. Statistics show that the number of baptized persons increases every year thanks to the pastoral work of these priests, who are wholly consecrated to the salvation of their brothers and sisters.

In this context, a special word of thanks must be expressed “to the fidei donum priests who work faithfully and generously at building up the community by proclaiming the word of God and breaking the Bread of Life, devoting all their energy to serving the mission of the Church.

Let us thank God for all the priests who have suffered even to the sacrifice of their lives in order to serve Christ ... Theirs is a moving witness that can inspire many young people to follow Christ and to expend their lives for others, and thus to discover true life” (Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, 26).

6. There have always been in the Church many men and women who, prompted by the action of the Holy Spirit, choose to live the Gospel in a radical way, professing the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. This multitude of men and women religious, belonging to innumerable Institutes of contemplative and active life, still plays “the main role in the evangelisation of the world” (Ad Gentes, 40).

With their continual and community prayer, contemplatives intercede without ceasing for all humanity. Religious of the active life, with their many charitable activities, bring to all a living witness of the love and mercy of God.

The Servant of God Paul VI concerning these apostles of our times said: “Thanks to their consecration they are eminently willing and free to leave everything and to go and proclaim the Gospel even to the ends of the earth. They are enterprising and their apostolate is often marked by an originality, by a genius that demands admiration. They are generous: often they are found at the outposts of the mission, and they take the greatest of risks for their health and their very lives. Truly the Church owes them much” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, 69).

7. Furthermore, so that the Church may continue to fulfil the mission entrusted to her by Christ, and not lack promoters of the Gospel so badly needed by the world, Christian communities must never fail to provide both children and adults with constant education in the faith.

It is necessary to keep alive in the faithful a committed sense of missionary responsibility and active solidarity with the peoples of the world. The gift of faith calls all Christians to co-operate in the work of evangelization. This awareness must be nourished by preaching and catechesis, by the liturgy, and by constant formation in prayer.

It must grow through the practice of welcoming others, with charity and spiritual companionship, through reflection and discernment, as well as pastoral planning, of which attention to vocations must be an integral part.

8. Vocations to the ministerial priesthood and to the consecrated life can only flourish in a spiritual soil that is well cultivated. Christian communities that live the missionary dimension of the mystery of the Church in a profound way will never be inward looking.

Mission, as a witness of divine love, becomes particularly effective when it is shared in a community, “so that the world may believe” (cf. Jn 17: 21). The Church prays everyday to the Holy Spirit for the gift of vocations. Gathered around the Virgin Mary, Queen of the Apostles, as in the beginning, the ecclesial community learns from her how to implore the Lord for a flowering of new apostles, alive with the faith and love that are necessary for the mission.

9. While I entrust this reflection to all the ecclesial communities so that they may make it their own, and draw from it inspiration for prayer, and as I encourage those who are committed to work with faith and generosity in the service of vocations, I wholeheartedly send to educators, catechists and to all, particularly to young people on their vocational journey, a special Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, 3 December 2007

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER
XLV WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR VOCATIONS


Dear brothers and sisters,

1. For the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, to be celebrated on 13 April 2008, I have chosen the theme: Vocations at the service of the Church on mission.

The Risen Jesus gave to the Apostles this command: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19), assuring them: “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28: 20).

The Church is missionary in herself and in each one of her members. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, every Christian is called to bear witness and to announce the Gospel, but this missionary dimension is associated in a special and intimate way with the priestly vocation.

In the covenant with Israel, God entrusted to certain men, called by him and sent to the people in his name, a mission as prophets and priests. He did so, for example, with Moses: “Come, - God told him - I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring forth my people … out of Egypt …when you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you will serve God upon this mountain” (Ex 3: 10 and 12). The same happened with the prophets.

2. The promises made to our fathers were fulfilled entirely in Jesus Christ. In this regard, the Second Vatican Council says: “The Son, therefore, came, sent by the Father. It was in him, before the foundation of the world, that the Father chose us and predestined us to become adopted sons … To carry out the will of the Father, Christ inaugurated the kingdom of heaven on earth and revealed to us the mystery of that kingdom.

By his obedience he brought about redemption” (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 3). And Jesus already in his public life, while preaching in Galilee, chose some disciples to be his close collaborators in the messianic ministry.

For example, on the occasion of the multiplication of the loaves, he said to the Apostles: “You give them something to eat” (Mt 14: 16), encouraging them to assume the needs of the crowds to whom he wished to offer nourishment, but also to reveal the food “which endures to eternal life” (Jn 6: 27).

He was moved to compassion for the people, because while visiting cities and villages, he found the crowds weary and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (cf. Mt 9: 36). From this gaze of love came the invitation to his disciples: “Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest” (Mt 9: 38), and he sent the Twelve initially “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” with precise instructions.

If we pause to meditate on this passage of Matthew’s Gospel, commonly called the “missionary discourse”, we may take note of those aspects which distinguish the missionary activity of a Christian community, eager to remain faithful to the example and teaching of Jesus.

To respond to the Lord’s call means facing in prudence and simplicity every danger and even persecutions, since “a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Mt 10: 24).

Having become one with their Master, the disciples are no longer alone as they announce the Kingdom of heaven; Jesus himself is acting in them: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me” (Mt 10: 40).

Furthermore, as true witnesses, “clothed with power from on high” (Lk 24: 49), they preach “repentance and the forgiveness of sins” (Lk 24: 47) to all peoples.

3. Precisely because they have been sent by the Lord, the Twelve are called “Apostles”, destined to walk the roads of the world announcing the Gospel as witnesses to the death and resurrection of Christ.

Saint Paul, writing to the Christians of Corinth, says: “We – the Apostles – preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1: 23). The Book of the Acts of the Apostles also assigns a very important role in this task of evangelization to other disciples whose missionary vocation arises from providential, sometimes painful, circumstances such as expulsion from their own lands for being followers of Jesus (cf. 8,1-4).

The Holy Spirit transforms this trial into an occasion of grace, using it so that the name of the Lord can be preached to other peoples, stretching in this way the horizons of the Christian community.

These are men and women who, as Luke writes in the Acts of the Apostles, “have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ” (15: 26). First among them is undoubtedly Paul of Tarsus, called by the Lord himself, hence a true Apostle. The story of Paul, the greatest missionary of all times, brings out in many ways the link between vocation and mission.

Accused by his opponents of not being authorized for the apostolate, he makes repeated appeals precisely to the call which he received directly from the Lord (cf. Rom 1: 1; Gal 1: 11-12 and 15-17).

4. In the beginning, and thereafter, what “impels” the Apostles (cf. 2 Cor 5: 14) is always “the love of Christ”. Innumerable missionaries, throughout the centuries, as faithful servants of the Church, docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, have followed in the footsteps of the first disciples.

The Second Vatican Council notes: “Although every disciple of Christ, as far in him lies, has the duty of spreading the faith, Christ the Lord always calls whomever he will from among the number of his disciples, to be with him and to be sent by him to preach to the nations [cf. Mk 3: 13-15]” (Decree Ad Gentes, 23).

In fact, the love of Christ must be communicated to the brothers by example and words, with all one’s life. My venerable predecessor John Paul II wrote: “The special vocation of missionaries ‘for life’ retains all its validity: it is the model of the Church's missionary commitment, which always stands in need of radical and total self-giving, of new and bold endeavours”. (Encyclical Redemptoris Missio, 66)

5. Among those totally dedicated to the service of the Gospel, are priests, called to preach the word of God, administer the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, committed to helping the lowly, the sick, the suffering, the poor, and those who experience hardship in areas of the world where there are, at times, many who still have not had a real encounter with Jesus Christ.

Missionaries announce for the first time to these people Christ’s redemptive love. Statistics show that the number of baptized persons increases every year thanks to the pastoral work of these priests, who are wholly consecrated to the salvation of their brothers and sisters.

In this context, a special word of thanks must be expressed “to the fidei donum priests who work faithfully and generously at building up the community by proclaiming the word of God and breaking the Bread of Life, devoting all their energy to serving the mission of the Church.

Let us thank God for all the priests who have suffered even to the sacrifice of their lives in order to serve Christ ... Theirs is a moving witness that can inspire many young people to follow Christ and to expend their lives for others, and thus to discover true life” (Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, 26).

6. There have always been in the Church many men and women who, prompted by the action of the Holy Spirit, choose to live the Gospel in a radical way, professing the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. This multitude of men and women religious, belonging to innumerable Institutes of contemplative and active life, still plays “the main role in the evangelisation of the world” (Ad Gentes, 40).

With their continual and community prayer, contemplatives intercede without ceasing for all humanity. Religious of the active life, with their many charitable activities, bring to all a living witness of the love and mercy of God.

The Servant of God Paul VI concerning these apostles of our times said: “Thanks to their consecration they are eminently willing and free to leave everything and to go and proclaim the Gospel even to the ends of the earth. They are enterprising and their apostolate is often marked by an originality, by a genius that demands admiration. They are generous: often they are found at the outposts of the mission, and they take the greatest of risks for their health and their very lives. Truly the Church owes them much” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, 69).

7. Furthermore, so that the Church may continue to fulfil the mission entrusted to her by Christ, and not lack promoters of the Gospel so badly needed by the world, Christian communities must never fail to provide both children and adults with constant education in the faith.

It is necessary to keep alive in the faithful a committed sense of missionary responsibility and active solidarity with the peoples of the world. The gift of faith calls all Christians to co-operate in the work of evangelization. This awareness must be nourished by preaching and catechesis, by the liturgy, and by constant formation in prayer.

It must grow through the practice of welcoming others, with charity and spiritual companionship, through reflection and discernment, as well as pastoral planning, of which attention to vocations must be an integral part.

8. Vocations to the ministerial priesthood and to the consecrated life can only flourish in a spiritual soil that is well cultivated. Christian communities that live the missionary dimension of the mystery of the Church in a profound way will never be inward looking.

Mission, as a witness of divine love, becomes particularly effective when it is shared in a community, “so that the world may believe” (cf. Jn 17: 21). The Church prays everyday to the Holy Spirit for the gift of vocations. Gathered around the Virgin Mary, Queen of the Apostles, as in the beginning, the ecclesial community learns from her how to implore the Lord for a flowering of new apostles, alive with the faith and love that are necessary for the mission.

9. While I entrust this reflection to all the ecclesial communities so that they may make it their own, and draw from it inspiration for prayer, and as I encourage those who are committed to work with faith and generosity in the service of vocations, I wholeheartedly send to educators, catechists and to all, particularly to young people on their vocational journey, a special Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, 3 December 2007

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

AND REMARKS TO THE PARISH COUNCIL

At 9 o'clock this morning - the third Sunday of Lent - the Holy Father came to the parish church of Santa Maria Liberatrice in Testaccio, in the central sector of Rome, for a pastoral visit during which he celebrated Holy Mass. Here is a translation of his homily:



Dear brothers and sisters,


Following the example of my venerated predecessors, the Servants of God Paul VI and John Paul II, who visited your parish on March 20, 1966, and on January 14, 1979, I too have come today to meet your community and to preside at the Eucharistic Celebration in your beautiful church dedicated to Santa Maria Liberatrice.

I have come in a circumstance that is particularly singular - the centenary of the consecration of this church and the title transfer of this parish from Santa Maria della Provvidenza, which already existed in this quarter, to Santa Maria Liberatrice.

It was St. Pius X who entrusted the parish to the spiritual children of Don Bosco, who, under the indefatigable leadership of the first disciple of St. John Bosco, the Blessed Fr. Michele Rua, constructed the church where we now find ourselves in.

In fact, the Salesians were already carrying out at the time their social and apostolic activity here in Testaccio, a district which has kept its particular territorial and cultural identity.

Although it is in the heart of the Roman metropolis, relations among your people have remained very familial, and even if conditions have changed a bit in the past 20 years, the rootedness of the people in their own territory, the identify of the district, and its attachment to religious traditions remain strong.

I know, for example, that your patronal feast day in honor of Santa Maria Liberatrice reunites every year so many citizens and families who for various reasons now live elsewhere.

Dear friends, I came gladly to share your joy in the jubilee event that you are celebrating, and that I wish to enrich with the possibility of gaining a plenary indulgence during your entire centennial year.

I affectionately greet all of you. First of all, the Cardinal Vicar (Cardinal Ruini); the Auxiliary Bishop for the central sector of the diocese, Mons. Ernesto Mandara; and your parish priest, Don Manfredo Leone.

From my heart, I thank him and our Salesian brothers for the pastoral service which together they render to your parish, and I am also thankful for the kind words which they have addressed to me in your name.

I also greet the guests of the Salesian Study House for Priests, which is housed in parochial buildings, and the different religious communities in this district: the Daughters of Maria Ausiliatrice (Lady of Help), the Daughters of Divine Providence, and the Good Shepherd sisters.

I greet their men and women collaborators, former Salesian students, parochial associations, the various groups involved in catechesis, liturgy, charity, and Scriptural readings and study; the Confraternity of Santa Maria Liberatrice; and the groups which organize youth gatherings and promote meetings and formation of engaged couples as well as established families.

I affectionately greet the children who are undergoing catechism and those who attend the oratories of the parish and of the Daughters of Maria Ausiliatrice.

And I extend my thoughts to all the residents of this district, especially the aged, the sick, those who live alone and others who are in difficulty. I remember all and each one in this Holy Mass.

Dear brothers and sisters, I ask myself together with you: What does our Lord tell us on an anniversary as important as this for your parish? In the Biblical text of today's third Sunday of Lent, there are useful points of reflection which are rather appropriate for this occasion.

Through the symbol of water, which we find in the first Reading and in the Gospel account of the Samaritan woman, the Word of God brings us a message that is always alive and always actual: God has thirst of our faith and wants us to find in him the source of our authentic happiness.

The risk for every believer is to practice a religion that is not authentic, to seek answers for the most intimate expectations of our heart not in God, or to use God as if he were in the service of our desires and plans.

In the first Reading, we see the Jewish people who suffer in the desert for lack of water, and, gripped by discouragement, as in other circumstances, they lament and react violently. They end up rebelling against Moses, almost rebelling against God himself.

The sacred author narrates, "(The Israelites) tested the LORD, saying, 'Is the LORD in our midst or not?'" (Ez 17,7). The people demanded that God should come in aid of their own expectations and needs, instead of abandoning themselves with confidence in his hands - in a test of faith, they lost trust in him.

How many times this happens in our own lives! On how many occasions, instead of conforming ourselves obediently to divine will, have we wanted that God may realize our plans and fulfill our expectations? On how many occasions has our faith shown itself to be fragile, our confidence weak, our religiosity contaminated by magical or merely earthly elements?

In this Lenten season, while the Church invites us to follow an itinerary of true penitence, let us receive with humble obedience the admonition of the Responsorial Psalm: "If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the desert, where your fathers tempted me; they tested me though they had seen my works" (Ps 94,7-9).

The symbolism of water returns with great eloquence in the famous Gospel page which recounts the encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan woman in Sicar, near Jacob's well. Right away we catch the link between the well built by the great patriarch of Israel to assure water for his family and the story of salvation in which God gives mankind the gushing water of eternal life.

If he has a physical thirst for water which is indispensable for living on this earth, man also has a spiritual thirst that only God can quench. This appears clearly in the dialog between Jesus and the woman who came to draw water from Jacob's well.

It all starts from Jesus's request: "Give me a drink".(cfr Jn 4,5-7). It would seem at first to be a simple request for some water on a warm midday. Actually, in that request - addressed moreover to a Samaritan woman (there was bad blood then between Samaritans and Jews) - Jesus opens in his interlocutor an interior path which brings her a desire for something more profound.

St. Augustine comments: "He who asked for a drink had thirst for the faith of that good woman" (In Io ev. Tract. XV,11: PL 35,1514). In fact, at a certain point, the woman herself asks Jesus for water (cfr Jn 4,15), thus showing that in every person, there is an innate need of God and of salvation that only he can fulfill. A thirst for the infinite that can be quenched only by the water that Jesus offers, the living water of the Spirit.

In a short while, we will hear these words in the Preface: "Jesus asked the woman of Samaria for water to drink, to make her the great gift of faith, and of this faith, she had such ardent thirst that lit in her the flame of love for God."

Dear brothers and sisters, in the dialog between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, we see the spiritual itinerary that each of us, that every Christian community. is called on to rediscover and to follow constantly.

Proclaimed during the Lenten season, this Gospel page takes on a particularly important value for catechumens who are close to their Baptism. This Sunday is, in fact, linked to the so-called 'first scrutiny', which was a sacramental rite for purification and grace.

The Samaritan woman thus becomes the symbol of the catechumen who is enlightened and converted by faith, who aspires to living water and is purified by the words and actions of the Lord.

But even we, who are already baptized, find in this Gospel episode a stimulus to rediscover the importance and the sense of our Christian life. Jesus wants to bring us, like the Samaritan woman, to forcefully profess our faith in him, so that we may then announce and testify to our brothers the joy of encountering him and the wonders that his love fulfills in our existence.

Faith is born from an encounter with Jesus, acknowledged and welcomed as the definitive Revealer and the Savior. Once the Lord had conquered the Samaritan woman's heart, her existence was transformed and she ran without delay to communicate the good news to her people (cfr Jn 4,29).

Dear brothers and sisters of the Parish of Santa Maria Liberatrice, the invitation of Christ to let ourselves be involved in his demanding evangelical proposition resounds forcefully this morning for every member of your parochial community.

St. Augustine used to say that God has thirst of our thirst for him, that he desires to be desired. The more the human being goes farther from God, the more God pursues him with his merciful love.

The liturgy today urges us - even considering the Lenten period that we are living - to review our relationship with Jesus, to find his face without tiring. This is indispensable so that you, dear friends, may be able to continue, in a new social and cultural context, the work of evangelization and of human and Christian education carried on for more than century by this parish, which counts in its list of parish priests the Venerable Luigi Maria Olivares.

Open your hearts ever more to pastoral missionary action which impels each Christian to go forth to meet persons - particularly, young people and families - where they live, work and spend their free time, to make them know about the merciful love of God.

I know that you are dedicating the same attention to looking after vocations to the priesthood and the consecrated life, which is of primary importance for the future of the Church.

I also encourage you to persevere in your educational commitment, which constitutes the typical charism of every Salesian parish. May the Oratory, the school, the moments of catechesis and prayer, be animated by authentic educators, namely, of witnesses close in heart to their fellowmen, especially to children, adolescents and young people.

May the Blessed Mary Liberator so beloved and venerated by you - who, together with her spouse Josephs educated Jesus the child and adolescent - protect the families and the religious in their task as educators, and give them the joy, as Don Bosco hoped, of seeing 'good Christians and honest citizens' grow up in this district. Amen!



After the Mass, Benedict XVI met with the Parish Pastoral Council and the priests and sisters of the parish. Responding to a poem dedicated to him in Romanesco, the dialect of Rome, the Pope delivered the following remarks extemporaneously. Here is a translation.


I am very happy to be here today among you. Unfortunately, I do not speak Romanesco, but as Catholics, we are all a bit Roman and we carry Rome in our hearts, so we can understand you enough. I find it very beautiful to be greeted in your dialect, because these are words that come from the heart.

And it is most beautiful and encouraging to see you represent all the many pastoral activities in this parish, the various realities you represent: priests, sisters of different congregations, catechists, and laymen who work with the parish in many different ways.

I see St. John Bosco alive among you, continuing with his work. I see how Our Lady of Liberation, who makes us free, invites us to open the doors to Christ and to give true freedom even to others. This means building up the Church, to create the presence of the Kingdom of Christ among us. Thank you for all that.

Today, we read a very relevant Gospel passage. The Samaritan woman in the story can represent modern man, modern life. She had five husbands and was living with another. She made full use of her freedom but that did not make her more free, only more empty.

But we see that she also had a great desire to find true happiness, true joy. That is why she was uneasy, finding herself farther than ever from such happiness. But she, who apparently lived a rather superficial life, distant from God, showed, from the moment Christ spoke to her, that in her deepest heart, she harbored a question about God: Who is God? Where can we find him? How can we adore him?

In this woman we can see the reflection of our life today, with all the problems we have, but we see, as well, that in the profundity of our heart there is always the question of God and the expectation hat he will manifest himself in some way.

Our activity is really expectation. It is our response to the expectation if those who await the light of the Lord, and in responding to this expectation, we grow in faith and understand that faith is the water we thirst after.

In this sense, I want to encourage you yo pursue your pastoral and missionary commitment, with the dynamism to help people today find true freedom and true joy.

All of us, like the woman at the well, are on the path to true liberty in which we will find true joy. But often, some may find themselves taking the wrong way. May they, through the light of our Lord and our cooperation with him, discover that true liberty comes from the encounter with the Truth that is love and joy.

Today two statements particularly struck me. One was by the parish priest, who said "We have more future than the past." That is true for our Church, which always has more future than its past, and that is why we can proceed with courage.

The other statement was from the remakrs made by the representative of your pastoral council: "True sanctity is in being joyous". Sanctity is shown by joy. Joy is born from the encounter with Christ.

Let this be my wish for all of you, that this joy always be reborn in knowing Christ, and with it, a renewed dynamism in announcing it to your brothers. I thank you for everything that you do.

Happy Easter!

ON THE CARE OF INCURABLE AND DYING PATIENTS, 2/25/08


Here is a translation of the address given by the Holy Father to participants in an International Congress on the topic "Caring for the incurable patient and the dying: Ethical and operational orientations" on the occasion of the XIV General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life.



Dear brothers and sisters,

With sincere joy I extend my greetings to all of you who are taking part in the Congress convoked by the Pontifical Academy for Life on the theme of "Caring for the incurable patient and the dying: Ethical and operational orientations".

The Congress takes place in connection with the XIV General Assembly of the Academy, whose members are present at this audience. I thank, first of all, Mons. Elio Sgreccia for his kind words of greeting. With him, I thank the entire administration, the Directory Council of the Academy, all its workers, regular, honorary and corresponding members.

Likewise, I extend a cordial and appreciative greeting to the moderators of this important Congress, and all the participants coming from different parts of the world. Dearest ones, your generous commitment and your testimony are truly worthy of praise.

Just considering the titles of the lectures given at the Congress, one can perceive the vast panorama of your reflections and your interest in the present, especially the secularized world of today.

You are seeking to give answers to so many problems raised every day by the incessant progress of the medical sciences, whose activities are correspondingly sustained by high-grade technological instruments.

All this evokes the urgent challenge to all, specially to the Church established by the risen Lord, to bring to the vast horizon of human life the splendor of revealed truth and the support of hope.

When life is extinguished at an advanced age, or at the very dawn of its earthly existence, or in full bloom because of unforeseen causes, we should not simply see in this a biological ending, or a life that closes, but a new birth and a renewed existence offered by the Risen One to whoever has not willingly refused his love.

Earthly experience ends with death, but death also opens for each of us, beyond time, the full and definitive life. The Lord of life is present next to the sick person as he who lives and gives life, he who said, "I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly" (Jn 10,10), "I am the Resurrection and the Life: whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live" (Jn 11,25), and "I will raise him on the last day" (Jn 6,54).

At that solemn and sacred moment, all the efforts made in the Christian hope of improving ourselves and the world that has been entrusted to us, purified by Grace, find sense and become precious, thanks to the love of God, Creator and Father.

When, at the moment of death, the relationship with God is fully realized in the encounter with "him who does not die, who is Life itself, and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we live" (Spe salvi, 27).

For the community of believers, this encounter of the dying person with the Spring of Life and of Love represents a gift which is valuable for all, which enriches the communion of all the faithful. As such, it should have the attention and the participation of the community, not only the family and close relatives, but within the limits and ways possible, of the entire community that has any connections with the dying person.

No believer should die in solitude and abandonment. Mother Teresa of Calcutta had a particular concern to bring together the poor and the derelict so that at least at the moment of death, they could experience, in the embrace of their brothers and sisters, the warmth of the Father.

But it is not only the Christian community which, because of its special links of supra-natural communion, is committed to accompany and to celebrate with its members the mystery of pain and death, and the dawn of a new life.

In fact, all of society, through its health and civilian institutions, is called on to respect life and the dignity of the sick and the dying. Even in the awareness that 'it is not science which will redeem man' (Spe salvi, 26), the entire society, and in particular, the sectors of medical science, are held responsible to express the solidarity of love, protection and respect for human life at every moment of its earthly development, especially when it is afflicted by illness or in its terminal phase.

More concretely, it means assuring to every person who needs it the necessary support through adequate therapies and medical interventions, individualized and managed according to criteria of medical proportionality, always taking account of the moral duty to administer (on the part of the doctor) and to accept (on the part of the patient) those means of preserving life which, in a given concrete situation, are considered 'ordinary'.

But in the case of therapies which are significantly risky or could be prudently considered 'extraordinary', the recourse to such therapies should be considered morally licit but optional.

Moreover, one must always assure to every person the necessary and obligatory health care, as well as support for the families most strained by the illness of a family member, especially if such illness is serious and prolonged.

Even from the viewpoint of work regulation, specific rights are customarily recognized for family members in case of births. Analogously, and especially in certain circumstances, similar rights should be recognized for families that are constrained by the terminal illness of a member.

A fraternal and humanitarian society cannot fail to take into account the difficult conditions of families who, often for long periods, must carry the weight of managing domestic duties for seriously ill persons who can no longer be self-sufficient. Greater respect for human life inevitably manifests itself through the concrete solidarity of everyone and each one, and this constitutes one of the most urgent challenges of our time.

As I reminded in the encyclical Spe salvi, "the true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and bear it inwardly through 'com-passion' is a cruel and inhuman society" (No. 38).

In a complex society, strongly influenced by the dynamics of productivity and the demands of the economy, fragile persons and the poorest families risk being pushed aside in times of economic difficulty and/or sickness.

Increasingly, we find in the larger cities old persons who are alone, even in times of grave illness and near death. In such situations, the push for euthanasia can become pressing, especially when considered through a utilitarian vision of persons.

In this regard, I take the occasion to repeat, once again, the firm and constant ethical condemnation of every form of direct euthanasia,
following the multi-century teaching of the Church.

The synergistic efforts of civilian society and the community of believers should be aimed so that everyone can not only live responsibly and with dignity, but also undergo the moment of trial and of death in the best conditions of fraternity and solidarity, even when death comes to a poor family or in a hospital bed.

The Church, with its already functioning institutions and with new initiatives, is called on to offer testimony of hardworking charity, especially in the critical situation of persons who are not self-sufficient and do not have any family support, and for gravely ill persons who need palliative therapies, in addition to the appropriate religious assistance.

On the one hand, the spiritual mobilization of parochial and diocesan communities, and on the other, the creation or improvement of appropriate structures dependent on the Church, could animate and sensitize the whole social climate, so that the testimony of solidarity and charity may be shown to every suffering person and in particular, to those who are near death .

Society, for its part, should not fail to assure the support that it owes to families who intend to stay home - for periods that may be lengthy - in order to look after a family member afflicted by degenerative diseases (cancerous, neuro-degenerative, etc) or who needs particularly demanding attention.

In a special way, all the vital and responsible forces of society must help those institutions of specific assistance which require a lot of specialized personnel and expensive equipment. It is above all in this field that the synergy between the Church and civilian institutions could prove particularly valuable to assure the necessary aid to human life at its most fragile moments.

While I wish that this international congress, held in connection with the jubilee of the apparitions in Lourdes, may identify new proposals to alleviate the situation of those who are in the terminal phases of illness, I call on you to pursue your meritorious commitment of service to life in its every stage.

With these sentiments, I assure you of my prayers in support of your work and I accompany you with a special Apostolic Blessing.

RESERVED FOR ADDRESS TO EL SALVADOR BISHOPS -
TO TRANSLATE FROM SPANISH.