PASTORAL VISITS IN ITALY

PASTORAL VISIT TO LORETO, Sept. 1-2, 2007





ARRIVAL IN LORETO



The Holy Father left Castel Gandolfo by helicopter at 16:10 and arrived at the heliport of the John Paul II Youth Center in Montorso, Loreto, at 17:15 as scheduled.

He was welcomed by Mons. Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian bishops conference and archbishop of Genova; Mons. Gianni Dani, Archbishop Prelate of Loreto; Vice President Francesco Rutelli, concurrently Minister of Cultural Assets and Tourism, representing the Italian government; Giuseppe Balboni Acqua, Italy's ambassador to the Holy See; Mons. Giuseppe Bertello, Apostolic Nuncio in Italy; Gian Mario Spacca, president of the Marche region; Giovanni D'Onofrio, prefect of Ancona; Moreno Pieroni, mayor of Loreto; Patricia Casagrande Esposto, president of Ancona province; and Fr. Francesco Pierpaoli, director of the John Paul II Youth Center.



THE ENCOUNTER








Fr. Giancarlo Bossi spoke briefly in behalf of all missionaries, and thanks the Pope for his prayers during
his hour of need. Right, he finally gets to meet Pope Benedict.




Here are the wire-service reports in English:



Pope decries collapse of marriages
By NICOLE WINFIELD


LORETO, Italy, Sept. 1 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI decried the collapse of marriages, telling tens of thousands of young Catholics Saturday that he was praying that a crisis in traditional family values doesn't become an "irreversible failure."

Benedict urged an estimated 300,000 young pilgrims who trekked to Loreto for a weekend rally to have faith that they can succeed in marriage even though so many others had failed.

"There is so much failure of love all around us!" Benedict told the crowd, camped out on a vast, dusty field. "How many couples don't succeed and separate? How many families end up in pieces? How many kids, even among you, have seen their parents separate and divorce?"

The weekend festival, designed to reinvigorate Italian Catholic youth, coincides with the Catholic Church's "Save Creation Day," and has a decidedly eco-friendly theme. Participants were given bright orange thermal packs made out of recycled nylon — containing their food for the weekend and biodegradable plates. They were also given a hand-cranked battery charger, three bags for recycling trash and prayer books for the Sunday Mass made out of recycled paper.

The Vatican has been going greener under Benedict, installing photovoltaic cells on the roof of its main auditorium to convert sunlight into electricity and joining a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions.

Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, frequently spoke out about the need to care for God's creation.

On Saturday, Benedict listened to the young people's stories about their broken homes and living on the periphery of society and assured them that he and the entire Roman Catholic Church were praying "that the crisis that is affecting families today doesn't become an irreversible failure."

Benedict has often bemoaned the collapse of family values and has spoken of the need to support "traditional" marriage between a man and a woman. The Italian bishops conference — which organized the rally — has mounted a major campaign to support traditional families and oppose proposed Italian legislation giving same-sex couples new rights.

Loreto is famous for the Holy House, a simple stone cottage that Catholic tradition says was the home in Nazareth where the Virgin Mary grew up and received the annunciation.

Legend has it that angels miraculously transported the structure from the Holy Land, where it had come under threat during the turmoil of the Crusades, and brought it to the Loreto area in central Italy near the Adriatic coast in 1294.

Benedict was to pray before the shrine late Saturday, and then return to the vast campground to celebrate Mass on Sunday morning. Many of the 300,000 youths planned to spend the night camped out on the field, where singer Andrea Bocelli and a host of others were entertaining them through the night.

Loreto was dear to Pope John Paul II, and was the site of his final pilgrimage, in September 2004.

The Loreto meeting was the first of three annual meetings sponsored by Italian bishops and is in many ways a warm-up for World Youth Day, to be held in Sydney next July 15-20. The 80-year-old Benedict is expected to journey to Australia for the event.


Pope says Mother Teresa
felt "God's silence"

Sept. 1 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Saturday that even the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta "suffered from the silence of God" despite her immense charity and faith.

The Pope, addressing a youth rally in central Italy, referred to a new book that reveals that the Roman Catholic nun was deeply tormented about her faith and suffered periods of doubt about God.

It is significant that the Pope mentioned Mother Teresa's torment about God's silence as not being unusual because there was some speculation that the letters could hurt the procedure to make her a saint.

"All believers know about the silence of God," he said in unprepared remarks. "Even Mother Teresa, with all her charity and force of faith, suffered from the silence of God," he said.

He said believers sometimes had to withstand the silence of God in order to understand the situation of people who do not believe.

Due out on September 4, the book, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light" is a collection of letters written to colleagues and superiors over 66 years.

The ethnic Albanian nun, who dedicated her life to poor, sick and dying in India, died in 1997 aged 87.

Mother Teresa had wanted all her letters destroyed, but the Vatican ordered they be preserved as potential relics of a saint, according to a spokeswoman for Doubleday, the U.S. publisher of the book.

Mother Teresa has been beatified but has not yet been made a saint.

Time magazine, which has first serial rights, published excerpts on its Web site last month.

When the German-born pontiff visited the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz last year, he publicly asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, died there.