GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY
The Holy Father held the General Audience at St. Peter's Square at 10:30 this morning, with a catechesis on St. Giovanni Leonardi (John Leonard).
Here is how he synthesized the catechesis in English:
This week marks the four hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint John Leonardi, the founder of the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God and a priest whose missionary zeal found expression in the establishment of the congregation of Propaganda Fide.
Saint John was born near Lucca, and after training as a pharmacist, became a priest committed to offering "the medicine of God" to the men and women of his time. At a period of great reform and renewal in the life of the Church, he made the crucified Christ the centre of his preaching and the criterion of all his activity.
John understood that all true reform is born of fidelity to Christ and love for the Church. It was love for Christ which inspired his efforts to catechize the young, to promote missionary activity and to renew Christian life and practice.
Saint John was convinced that Christ is the true measure of man, and so he worked with great realism and zeal to promote holiness and the reform of society.
During this Year for Priests, may the figure of this great missionary inspire priests and laity alike to "start anew from Christ" and embrace their vocation with passionate enthusiasm.
I offer a warm welcome to the English-speaking visitors at today’s Audience, including the Sisters and friends of the Congregation of Jesus and the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of their foundation by Mary Ward.
My particular greetings go to the groups of faithful from Iraq, from the Archdiocese of Samoa-Apia, and to the Diaconate ordination candidates from the Pontifical North American College accompanied by their families and friends. Upon all of you I invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace!
Here is a translation of the Holy father's full catechesis:
CATECHESIS ON
ST. GIOVANNI LEONARDI
Dear brothers and sisters!
The day after tomorrow, October 9, we will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the death of St. Giovanni Leonardi, founder of the religious Order of Clerks Regular of the Mother of God, canonized on April 17, 1938, and named patron saint of pharmacists on August 8, 2006.
He is also remembered for his great missionary zeal. Together with Mons. Juan Bautista Vives and the Jesuit Martin de Funes, he planned and contributed to the institution of a specific Congregation for missions in the Holy See, that of Propaganda Fide [Propagating the Faith, now called Evangelization of Peoples], and to the future birth of the Collegio Urbano di Propaganda Fide, which in the course of centuries has forged thousands of priests, many of them martyrs, to evangelize peoples.
Therefore, I am happy to cite this luminous figure of a priest as an example for all priests in this Year for Priests. He died in 1609 from influenza which he caught while devoting himself to the care of those who had been struck by an epidemic in the Roman quarter of Campitelli.
Giovanni Leonardi was born in 1641 in Diecimo, province of Lucca (Tuscany). The youngest of seven brothers, his youth was marked by the rhythms of faith lived in a healthy and industrious nuclear family, as well as assiduous apprenticeship in a shop for perfumes and medicaments in his hometown.
At age 17, he was enrolled by his father in a regular course of compounding in Lucca, with a view to becoming a pharmacist, or a 'specialist, as they were called then.
For almost a decade, the young Giovanni was an attentive and diligent student but when, under the norms prescribed by the then Republic of Lucca, he finally acquired the official recognition that would have allowed him to open a pharmacy, he started to wonder whether the time had come instead to carry out a plan that he had long nurtured in his heart.
After mature reflection, he decided to prepare for the priesthood. Thus, leaving the pharmacist's boutique, and having acquired adequate theological formation, he was ordained a priest, and celebrated his first Mass on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1572.
Nonetheless, he did not abandon his passion for the pharmacopoeia, because he felt that the profession of pharmacist would allow him to realize his vocation more fully - that is, to transmit to all men, through a holy life, 'the medicine of God', Jesus Christ crucified and risen, 'the measure of all things'.
Inspired by his belief that such medicine was required by all human beings more than any other thing, St. Giovanni Leonardi sought to make the personal encounter with Jesus Christ the fundamental reason for his own existence.
"It is necessary to start over with Christ", he liked to say. The primacy of Christ over everything became for him the concrete criterion for judgment and action, and the principal generator of his own priestly activity, which he carried out at a time when there was a vast and widespread spiritual renewal in the Church, thanks to the flowering of new religious institutes and to the luminous testimony of saints like Carlo Borromeo, Filippo Neri, Ignacio de Loyola, Giuseppe Calasanzio, Camille de Lellis, Luigi (Aloysius) Gonzaga.
With enthusiasm, he dedicated himself to apostolate among children and young people through the Compagnia della Dottrina Cristiana, gathering about him a group of young people with whom, on September 1,, 1574, he established the Congregation of Reformed Priests of the Virgin Mary, later called the Order of Clerks Regular of the Mother of God.
He exhorted his disciples "to have before the eyes of the mind only the honor, service and glory of Jesus Christ crucified", and as a good pharmacist accustomed to dosing out potions precisely, he added: "Lift up your hearts just a little more to God, and with him, take the measure of things".
Moved by apostolic zeal, in May 1605, he sent the newly elected Pope Paul V a memorandum suggesting criteria for an authentic renewal of the Church.
Observing "how necessary it was that those who aspire to reform the habits of men should seek, especially and first of all, the glory of God", adding that they should shine out "with the integrity of their life and thexcellence of their own habits, so that they may be able to demand and attract reform gently".
He also observed that "those who want to effect serious religious and moral reform should, like a good physician, first make a careful diagnosis of the ailments that trouble the Church in order to be able to prescribe for each of those ills the most appropriate remedy".
He noted that "the renewal of the Church should take place equally among the chiefs as well as their subordinates, on high as below. It should begin with those who command and extend down to their subjects".
Beause of this, while he asked the Pope to promote 'universal reform of the Church' he concerned himself with the Christian formation of the people, especially of children, who had to be "educated from their early years... in the purity of the Christian faith and in holy practices".
Dear brothers and sisters, the luminous figure of this saint invites all priests in the first place, and all Christians, to constantly aim towards 'the high standard of Christian living' which is holiness, each one, naturally, according to his own status.
Indeed, authentic ecclesial renewal can only come from faithfulness to Christ. In those years, during the cultural and social transition between the 16th and 17th centuries, the premises of future contemporary culture started to emerge, characterized by an undue scission between faith an reason, whose negative results included the marginalization of God, with the illusion that man could have total autonomy in choosing to live 'as if God did not exist'.
It is the crisis of modern thought, which has many times shown to have established itself often in forms of relativism. Giovanni LeonardI sensed what would be the true medicine for these spiritual ailments and synthesized it in the expression "Christ first of all' - Christ in the center of the human heart, in the center of history and of the cosmos.
He stated firmly that mankind had extreme need of Christ because he is our 'measure'. There is no area that cannot be touched by his power. There is no ailment that cannot find remedy in him. There is no problem that cannot be resolved in him.
"Christ or nothing!" This was his prescription for every type of spiritual and social reform.
There is another aspect of St. Giovanni Leonardi's spirituality that I am happy to underscore. On many occasions, he reiterated that the living encounter with Christ is realized in his Church, holy but fragile, rooted in history and sometimes obscured, where good grain and weeds grow together (cfr Mt 13,30), but nonetheless, always a sacrament of salvation.
With lucid awareness that the Church is the field of God (cfr Mt 13,24), he was not scandalized by her human weaknesses. To fight the weeds, he chose to be the good grain: that is, he decided to love Christ in the Church and to contribute to make her ever more a transparent sign of Christ.
He saw the Church with great realism, her human fragility, but also her being 'the field of God', his instrument for the salvation of man.
Not only that. For love of Christ, he worked with alacrity to purify the Church, to make her more beautiful and holy. He understood that every reform must be made within the Church, never against the Church.
In this, St. Giovanni Leonardi was truly extraordinary and his example always remains actual. Every reform certainly involves structures, but in the first place, it must impact the hearts of the faithful.
Only holy persons - men and women who allow themselves to be led by the divine Spirit - ready to carry out radical and courageous choices in the light of the Gospel can renew the Church and contribute in a decisive manner to build a better world.
Dear brothers and sisters, the existence of St. Giovanni Leonardi was always illuminated by the splendor of the Holy Face of Jesus, kept and venerated in the Cathedral of Lucca - it has become the eloquent symbol and undisputed synthesis of the faith that animated him.
Conquered by Christ as the Apostle Paul was, he showed his disciples - and continues to show all of us - the Christocentric ideal for which "one must strip oneself of all selfish interests and be concerned only with service to God, ... having before the eyes of the mind only the honor, service and glory of Christ Jesus crucified".
Alognside the Face of Jesus, he looked to the maternal face of Mary. She whom he chose to the patron of his Order, was for him teacher, sister, mother, and he experienced her constant protection.
May the example and intercession of this 'fascinating man of God', particularly in this Year for Priests, be a reminder and encouragement for all priests and for all Christians to live their own vocations with passion and enthusiasm.
In his plurilingual greetings, the Holy Father referred to the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary today, and entrusted the work of the current Synodal assembly on Africa to her.
To Italian pilgrims, he recalled the "importance' of the Marian prayer "so dear even to my venerated predecessors". He particularly called on the youth, the sick and newlyweds to place the Rosary at the center of their Christian life.
He also greeted Cardinal Ivan Dias and his co-workers at the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the officials and students of the Pontificio Collegio Urbano di Propaganda Fide, the participants of a pilgrimage promoted by the Order of the Mother of God, the priests, religious and seminarians of the Institute of Christ the King, and representatives of the Italian association 'Pianeta Down' (Planet Down - families with Down Syndrome
children).
To a delegation from Roio in L'Aquila, he said, "To the Virgin Mary of the Cross, who is venerated in the Shrine at Roio, I entrust once more the hopes and expectations of the peoples who were struck by the earthquake in March".
Below, the Holy Father meets a teenage boy with Down Syndrome.
What an elegant and joyous, youthful and vigorous, truly amazing figure the Holy Father is!
Pope Benedict XVI greets
Hawaii's 'miracle woman'
By Mary Vorsino
ROME — Aiea resident Audrey Toguchi, the woman at the heart of the second miracle attributed to Father Damien, met Pope Benedict XVI today during a general audience in St. Peter's Square.
Toguchi was in a special section of VIPs who sat in a section on the steps, near the Pope.
"In my whole life, I never thought I'd be so close to the Pope," said Toguchi. "I'm numb."
About 500 Hawaii pilgrims were in the general seating area in St. Peter's Square. They cheered when the group was mentioned as among those visiting the Vatican.
The Hawaii residents are on a pilgrimage for Father Damien's canonization, which will take place Sunday in St. Peter's Square.
Toguchi said Pope Benedict XVI struck her as a very kind person. He greeted her and others in the VIP section after the general audience.
Toguchi said she thanked the Pope for canonizing Father Damien. She also asked him to bless a packet of Father Damien medals.
Toguchi and her husband, Yukio, kissed the Pope's ring.
Toguchi's cure from lung cancer after praying to Father Damien was the second miracle attributed to the priest, assuring his canonization.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/10/2009 19:55]