BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Monday, Nov. 12, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of St. Josaphat

St. Josaphat (b Lithuania 1584, d Russia, 1623
Bishop and Martyr, Patron Saint of the Ukraine
Born around the time that the Church of Ruthenia split, with some
Orthodox returning to communion with Rome (Uniates), he grew up
a Uniate, with a reputation for holiness even as a boy. He became
a Basilian priest, well-schooled and ardent in preaching the Catholic
faith. After heading many monasteries, he became Bishop of Vitebsk
at age 38. His preaching converted many orthodox to Catholicism,
including Ignatius, Patriarch of Moscow, and a descendant of the
Paleologue emperors. He was murdered by a mob in Vitebsk who
supported a dissident hierarchy that had developed against him.
Lying in state, his body had the odor of sanctity and was incorrupt
when it was exhumed five years later. His remains were later taken
to Rome where he is buried in St. Peter's Basilica. Hos body was
exposed intact in 1797. In 1867, he became the first Eastern saint
to be canonized in the Latin rite.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111212.cfm


WITH THE HOLY FATHER TODAY

The Holy Father visited the 'Viva gli Anziani' (Long live the elderly) family house of the Sant'Egidio
Community in Rome to highlight the observance of the European Year for Active Aging and Solidarity among
Generations. Address in Italian.

The Vatican announced that the Pope has named Mons. Fortunato Nwachukwu of Nigeria, who has been
Protocol Chief at the Secretariat of State since 2007, to be the Apostolic Nuncio to Nicaragua, also
elevating him to the rank of Archbishop.

The poster headlined 'Long live the elderly!' is subtitled 'Preventing the Social Isolation of the Elderly Popuelation'.

Pope addresses his 'fellow elderly'
at Sant'Egidio Community home

Nov. 12, 2012






“The quality of a society, I would say of a civilization, is judged by how well older people are treated and the place reserved for them in community life. Whoever makes room for the elderly makes room for life! Whoever welcomes the elderly welcomes life! ", affirmed Pope Benedict XVI during a visit Monday morning to the Community of Sant'Egidio's home for the elderly on the Janiculum Hill, Rome.
Emer McCarthy reports:

The Holy Father was warmly welcomed by the residents and he began by addressing them as his “peers”. Referring to the current European Year for Active Aging and Solidarity between Generations, the Pope said that "the elderly are a value to society, especially for young people. There can be no true human growth and education without a fertile contact with the elderly, because their very existence is like an open book in which the younger generation can find valuable guidance for life’s journey".

However he noted that “often, society, dominated by the logic of efficiency and profit, does not accept it as such, and indeed often rejects it, considering older people as unproductive, useless. Many times you hear the suffering of those who are marginalized and living far from home or in solitude. I think there should be a greater commitment, starting from families and public institutions, to ensure that older people can stay in their homes. The wisdom of life which they bear is a great wealth.”

Despite this, the Pope said “even "when life becomes fragile, in old age, it never loses its value and dignity, each one of us, at any stage of existence, is wanted, loved by God, everyone is important and necessary".

"This phase of life", he concluded, "is also a gift to deepen our relationship with God. The example of Blessed John Paul II was and still is enlightening for everyone. Do not forget that among the valuable resources that you have is the essence of prayer: become intercessors to God, praying with faith and constancy. Pray for the Church, for me, for the needs of the world, for the poor, so that there may be no more in the world. The prayer of the elderly can protect the world, perhaps helping it in a more incisive way than the toil of many. Today I would like to entrust to your prayers the good of the Church and world peace."



Here is a translation of the Holy father's address:

---

Dear brothers and dear sisters,

I am truly happy to be with you in this 'family home' of the Sant'Egidio Community that is dedicated to the elderly. I thank your president, Prof.Marco Impagliazzo, for the warm words he addressed to me. Along with him, I greet Prof. Andrea Riccardi, founder of the community.

And for their presence here today, I thank the Auxiliary Bishop for the historic center of Rome, Mons. Matteo Zuppi; the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Mons. Vincenzo Paglia' and all the friends of the St. Egidio Community.

I come to you as Bishop of Rome, but also as an elderly person visiting his contemporaries. It is superfluous to say that I know very well the difficulties, the problems and the limitations of advanced age, and I know that for many, these difficulties are aggravated by the economic crisis.

Sometimes, at a certain age, one turns to recall the past, lamenting the time when one was young, enjoyed fresh energies, and made plans for the future. That is why looking back is sometimes veiled in sadness, as one considers this present phase in life as a time of decline.

This morning, addressing myself to all elderly people, and even in the awareness of the difficulties that our age implies, I wish to tell you with profound conviction - it is beautiful to be old.

At every age, one must know how to discover the presence and the blessings of the Lord, and the richness deriving from him. One must never be imprisoned by sadness. We have received the gift of long life. Life is beautiful even at our age, notwithstanding the inevitable infirmities and limitations. On our faces, may there always be, not sadness, but the joy of feeling ourselves loved by God.

In the Bible, longevity is considered a blessing of God. Today, this blessing is widespread and must be seen as a gift to be appreciated and valued. And yet, society, dominated by the logic of efficiency and of profit, often does not welcome it as such.Rather, it often rejects old age, considering the elderly as unproductive and useless.

So many times, we sense the suffering of those who are marginalized, who live away from their own homes, and in solitude. I think that there should be a greater effort, starting with families and public institutions, to do all that is possible so that elderly people may remain in their own homes.

The wisdom of life that we carry as older people is a great wealth. The quality of a society - and I would say, of a civilization - can also be judged by how elerly people are treated and for the place reserved for them in the common good. Those who make room for the elderly make room for life. Those who welcome the elderly welcome life.

Te Sant'Egidio Community, from its beginnings, has sustained many elderly people along the way, helping them to remain in their respective life surroundings by opening various 'family homes' in Rome and around the world.

Through solidarity between young people and the elderly, it has helped to make clear that the Church is effectively the family for all generations, in which everyone must feel 'at home' and where it is not the logic of profit and possession that reigns but that of love and giving freely.

Even when life becomes fragile in old age, it never loses its value and dignity. Each of u, at whatever stage of existence, is wanted and loved by God. Each of us is important and necessary. [Homily at the start of Benedict XVI's Petrine Ministry, April 24, 2005).

My visit today takes place during the European Year for Active Aging and of Solidarity among Generations. It is in this context that I wish to reiterate that elderly people are valuable to society, especially for the young. There can be no true human growth and education unless there is fruitful contact with the elderly, because their very existence is like an open book in which the younger generations can find valuable directions for the journey of life.

Dear friends, at our age, we often experience the need of assistance from others - this too happens for the Pope. In the Gospel we read that Jesus tells Peter, "When you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go" (Jn 21,18).

The Lord was referring to the way in which the Apostle would bear witness to his faith to the point of martyrdom. But it also makes us reflect on the fact that the need for assistance is a condition for the elderly. I invite you to look at this likewise as a gift from the Lord because it is a grace to be sustained and accompanied by others, to feel their affection!

This is important in every phase of life: no one can live alone and without assistance. The human being is relational. And in this home, I note with pleasure that those who help and those who are being helped form one family whose lifeblood is love.

Dear elderly brothers and sisters, sometimes the days may seem long and empty, with difficulties but few commitments and encounters. Never be discouraged: You are a richness for society,even in suffering and sickness. Moreover, this phase of life is also a gift that enables us to deepen our relationship with God.

The example of Blessed John Paul II was and continues to be illuminating for everyone. Do not forget that among the precious resources you have is the essential one of prayer. Become intercessors before God, [praying with faith and constancy.

Pray for the Church, including myself, for the needs of the world, for the poor, and for an end to violence in this world.

The prayers of the elderly can protect the world, perhaps even helping more decisively than the efforts of many. I wish to entrust to your prayers the good of the Church and peace in the world.

The Pope loves you and counts on all of you! You must feel loved by God, and bring to our society - that is often so individualistic and efficiency-driven - a ray of God's love. God will always be with you and those who sustain you with their affection and assistance.

I entrust you all to the maternal intercession of the Virgin Mary, who will always accompany our journey with her maternal love, and I gladly impart to each and everyone my blessing. Thank you to everyone!

---

After the address, the Pope unveiled and blessed a marker to commemorate the visit. After greeting the youth community of Sant'Egidio, he returned to the Vatican.





A backgrounder from Sant'Egidio

The Pope has chosen to visit an innovative experience in the field of services for the aged, part of a 30-year-long effort on the part of the Community of Sant’Egidio to improve the condition of the elderly in Rome and in the world on the occasion of the European Year of Active Aging and of Solidarity Between Generations. A special occasion. For a global message which satisfies a profound need of our times.
The Pope first met with some elderly Haitian refugees and a delegation from the Community of Sant’Egidio. He then proceeded to the home for both self-sufficient and not self-sufficient people, on the top floor, which represents a model for family-like assistance and health care 24 hours a day.

Afterwards, he visited the elderly residents of the mini-apartments of the structure, who have the benefit of common services and, when necessary, the care furnished in the rest of the Home.
The Pope then addressed all the residents in the garden of the home; it was broadcast on a large screen to the crowd outside the building.

The home visited by the Pope was inaugurated in January 2009 and now accommodates 28 seniors, is a particularly successful expression of a housing arrangement that combines a family home (for non self-sufficient guests as well) with a protected condominium. Thus the guests of the studio apartments can have, aside from other services, a permanent relationship with the care-givers of the family home on duty 24 hours a day.

The Community of Sant’Egidio has been close to the elderly population since the beginning, in the 1970s, attending to them in the outer suburbs as well as the center of Rome. The seniors appeared to be sick of loneliness, asking for company and support. The friendship has continued through the years with loyalty, not only in Rome and the rest of Italy, but in all countries in the North and South of the world where the Community is present.

Today in Rome, service to the elderly reaches 18,000 people, cared for by 800 volunteers. There are also 100 small communities of solidarity and friendship among the elderly. The elderly, with their prayers, represent a strong source of support for the Church and all of the people who are suffering.

All over the world the number of elderly people is on the rise, but their longevity, in many parts of the world, is viewed with growing concern, to the point of taking on the form of a virtual generational conflict.

“Reconciliation” between different generations is needed: youth and adults need the elderly and vice versa. A society that has no room for the elderly is inhuman. That is why the Community in Rome involves hundreds of teenagers and young adults in meetings with the elderly, including visits to the institutes where many older people live.

These meetings help the youth discover that longevity is one of the best results of our times and help the elderly understand that there is a place for them in our society because they still have a lot to give in terms of affection, friendship and a sense of life.
Helping the elderly to live at home

In large cities, isolation, the diminishing size of households and the elevated cost of rent all contribute to the estrangement of the eldest at the first sign of difficulty. Institutionalizing seniors sometimes appears to be the only possible and reasonable solution, but it is an arrangement that in many cases does not respect the desire of the elderly, who suffer from separation from the family environment, the objects and the memories of their homes.

An important aspect of the Community’s effort consists in supporting the families of the elderly, which often find themselves unprepared and disoriented in the face of disease and of the loss of independence on the part of older relatives.

Another important part of the service is building a network of relationships for seniors with neighbours, friends and the local parish, all resources for the ability to continue living at home. It is a service of monitoring and preventing emergencies - like heat waves, intense cold spells, falling down – and of strengthening the support system.

These efforts reach all residents over 75 in the Trastevere, Testaccio and Esquilino districts and involve in the so-called “network of proximity” over 600 volunteers, doctors, doormen, shop keepers, neighbours and family care-givers. This way social isolation is lessened to a large degree.

Statistics show a lower mortality rate in the senior populations of these three Roman neighbourhoods, thus proving that at home you live better and longer.

Living in a geriatric structure often means experiencing isolation and abandonment, which lessens the desire to live. The mortality rate is in fact four times higher in such institutions. The Community of Sant’Egidio is present in hundreds of institutional homes for the aged in Italy, Europe and on other continents with a service of companionship, animation and pastoral care.

Friendly and assiduous companionship helps the elderly maintain relations with the outside world and preserve the integrity of their personality. The presence of the Community in the institutes for the aged provides a stimulus and incentive for these structures to perform their jobs better.

New living arrangements proposed by the Community of Sant’Egidio
Staying at home is impossible for some seniors because of reduced autonomy, the loss of lodging because of family quarrels and economic hardship.

In this perspective, in order to reduce the number of admissions to mega-structures, the Community has implemented a number of alternative solutions, like experiences in co-housing which, in time, have paved the way for an articulated model for responding to the housing needs of the senior population: co-habitation, protected condominiums, family-like homes. In Rome alone there are more than 300 seniors housed in these various types of living arrangements.

There are seniors who are alone and have a home but do not have their health and are no longer completely self-sufficient, others who have a pension income but cannot afford the rent for an apartment, others that enjoy good health but are devoid of financial means. The Community of Sant’Egidio helps to get them together and accompanies them on the road to cohabitation, thereby enabling them to avoid inevitable institutionalization.

The elderly pool their economic and housing resources, living in homes that assure better living conditions. The homes are located in the center of the city, not far from the things that seniors need: stores, fresh markets, churches. These experiences receive the aid of younger members of the Community.

They also represent an occasion for cooperation and integration between generations. Such ventures have expanded in the last two years in Rome in order to respond to worsening economic conditions in several different sections of the city, from Ostia to Tufello, from Garbatella to Torrenova. 150 seniors are cared for this way.

There are entire buildings of studio apartments (40-60 square meters each) for one or two people, which are devoted to seniors who are self-sufficient but fragile from a housing point of view (homeless, evicted or completely alone). The guests are offered common services and support for problems of daily living. It is a way of continuing to live at home, with protection. More than 100 seniors are accommodated in Community protected condominiums.

Structures for seniors with reduced autonomy who can no longer stay home for a lack of housing, sufficient economic resources or meaningful inter-personal relations. The seniors live in a family-like home, furnished with taste: the guests are encouraged to bring their own furniture. The absence of architectural barriers and the presence of numerous auxiliaries help preserve autonomy.

Above all, these homes offer a humane relational life made up of exchanges with other generations, like a re-constituted family. They restore a sense of life and at the same time assure high-quality care. These family homes accommodate 50 seniors in Rome.

I had been wondering why the Vatican Press Office had not posted the text of the Holy Father's remarks after the Sistine Chapel concert in his honor on Saturday evening, until I came across a brief report from AGI saying he did not give his usual post-concert remarks, possibly because the composer of the major work on the program is his own brother...

Pope chooses not to give
a post-concert 'review' of
his brother's Holy Year Mass
by Salvatore Izzo




VATICAN CITY, Nov. 11 (Translated from AGI) -The Saturday evening concert at the Sistine Chapel was not concluded as it would have been normally, by a discourse from the Pope.

The concert featured the Holy Year Mass composed by his brother, Mons. Georg Ratzinger, and though it was very beautiful, the Pope apparently did not think it proper to comment on it in public.

After the concert, he said, "Dear friends, I am not giving an address tonight, only a blessing. Thanks to you all, especially the choir. Good night, and have a good week".

For his brother, he had an affectionate gesture before they both posed with the choir for pictures. For that, Mons. Georg Gaenswein, the Pope's personal secretary, retrieved from both brothers the canes which both now use - black for the Pope, white for his brother.

I had high hopes about this item which seems to be based on an advance look at the manuscript of the Pope's new book, but I now wish I had not wasted time translating it because Cervo's language is far from crystalline and his thinking appears non-linear. So while he purports to outline what is contained in the book, the points he claims to be underscored by the Pope are far from clearly articulated (in which sense, my translation must be considered approximative as I had to try and make sense of his statements)...

Joseph Ratzinger's inquiry
into the childhood of Jesus
by Martino Cervo
Translated from

November 12, 2012

The immersion of Joseph Ratzinger (who insists on signing his secular name to his trilogy on JESUS OF NAZARETH) in the mysteries of the Gospel almost to the point of 'self-identification', is reminiscent of Caravaggio's 'carnality' in his paintings of Gospel subjects.

As when, in Chapter 2 of his third book on the life of Jesus (which Libero is able to anticipate, before it comes out soon from Rizzoli), he describes the stupefaction of Joseph when he learns about the pregnancy of Mary, his promised spouse, 'although she had not known man'.

Sources who have read the manuscript of L'Infanzia di Gesu (The childhood of Jesus) - the Pope's foreword and two brief excerpts from the book were released before the Frankfurt Book Fair last month - the theologian Pope re-reads the Annunciation, noting how Joseph, a just man, loves Mary despite the blow of his great disappointment - which he initially perceived, not wrongly, as a betrayal - that Mary was pregnant but not by him.

Nonetheless, Joseph does not represent an exteriorized or pharisaic legalism, because he strives to find a unity between love and the law. This seems to be one of the most surprising passages of this new book by the Pope - a sort of prequel to the first two volumes.

In which he had focused on the two phases of Jesus's public ministry and preaching: 'From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration', in Vol. 1 (2007), and 'From the entry into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, in Vol. 2 (2011).

He had expressed the hope that God would allow him time to complete his inquiry into the life of Jesus by 'recovering' the early years of Jesus's life. As this third volume shows, Providence did give him the time he needed.

The text is necessarily shorter than the first two volumes - it has four chapters and an epilogue that reviews the texts of Matthew and Luke, from the Annunciation to the episode of Jesus in the temple discussing Scriptures with the priests.

Once more, we are struck by the humility of the Pope who offers his 'little book' [and the whole trilogy, for that matter] as if he were just another Biblical exegete who is open to dialog [and even contestation] by his peers.

The Pope has two concerns: on the one hand, the merciless and continual historical contextualization of the Gospels; on the other hand, the natural consideration that an approach to the Gospels is not credible if it ignores questions such as: Is it true what the Gospels say? Does it affect us at all, personally, today? If so, how?

Anchored to the rationality in which the Christian faith is embedded, Benedict XVI delves into the roots of Jesus's claim that he is the Son of God. In fact, in Chapter 1, he starts not with the Annunciation but from Pilate's question to Jesus; "Where do you come from?"

Pilate's question was, not biographical curiosity. The problem of problems is about the nature of a man who dared attribute divine prerogatives to himself - the remission of sins. In fact, much is known about many of his [prominent] contemporaries, but his claim to divinity is an unbreachable mystery.

Joseph Ratzinger combines the attitude of an erudite who ventures into fascinating references to the Old Testament with the passion of a lover who focuses his knowledgeable attention on Jesus. In the Pope's books, the truth of history and the truth of faith are entwined. If the first fails, the second would be in vain; but without the truth of faith, everything about Jesus would be reduced to a comforting memory, whereas, the Pope notes, using a surprising [and trendy] English word, "redemption is not 'wellness'".

In the second chapter, in which he looks into the Annunciation, Ratzinger's approach is somewhat reminiscent of Vittorio Messori's Ipotesi su Gesu. It is a true and proper inquiry which confronts the question of the sources used by the evangelists, the historical dating of the events, to their historic and geographical references, in a continuous underscoring that, in order to have a complete experience of the faith of which Joseph Ratzinger is now the leader, the historicity of the New Testament cannot be denied .

Rather, it is dualism which must be discarded from the start: Jesus is a new beginning firmly set within the Jewish tradition - someone who cannot be understood without it, but who is also totally and uniquely Another.

It is precisely the figure of Mary who incarnates the new beginning for the human story: the greatest revolution in human history is generated in the heart of a humble girl from a poor family of observant Jews.

For Joseph Ratzinger, Our Lady is the kernel of this novelty": starting from the Angel's greeting - he chooses 'chaire' found in the Greek texts, the language of Logos, over 'shalom' meaning peace in the Hebrew texts, and translates 'chaire' as "Rejoice!". The dialog with Mary opens all of mankind to salvation. No longer is salvation only for the chosen people, but for the entire human community, the whole world.

But what does the Annunciation contain? Benedict XVI introduces a new category - that of the event itself: God who saves with his presence, as the ancient words from the Old Testament take on a new life to tells us the story of the salvation which now accompanies man.

The turning point in the relationship between the divine and the human is the womb of a woman, a womb that is freely available. Mary's obedience is humble and magnanimous at the same time in making the greatest of all human decisions about man's own destiny.

Those who have read these pages speak of the Pope's ardent writing, a moving hymn to the woman Dante called "(you who are) the daughter of Your Son".

Joseph is the first witness of this monumental 'deference' of God to the Yes of an adolescent girl. After Mary, he is the first to confront the humanly incredible, finding himself a father-to-be in the most unexpected way.

The Pope then dwells on a specially delicate point: the super-imposition of the Messianic intervention of salvation with that of man's personal redemption. The promise of Jesus immediately transcends any 'political' content , becoming at once less 'socially relevant' [for the Jews and human society at large] and yet infinitely more radical.

At stake was not the liberation of Israel in the historical context [the Jews believe in a Messiah who will redeem them, but do not believe Jesus was that Messiah], but the redemption of man in every time and place.

The event of Jesus was unfathomable to the Jewish mind: Joseph Ratzinger writes that the mission of the Jewish Messiah did not correspond to an immediate expectation of messianic salvation. Through a long and complex telling of the history of Israel and its people, he recounts how the promises made by Isaiah (which he carefully dates to 733 BC), caught the Israelites off guard, only to become actual flesh and blood centuries later in the womb of Mary.

This, says the Pope, was quite scandalous to the Jewish mind, just as it is simply 'unacceptable' to what the author calls 'the modern spirit'. He refers here to a concept dear to his papacy: that the powers-that-be claim God can operate on ideas and thoughts but not on 'matter'. [?????] A troubling concept, says the Pope.

Chapter 3 is a sweeping account of the Christian fact, which the Pope nails down with historical, chronological and even geographical coordinates.

He confronts the issue of freedom and grace which, he says, compenetrate each other. In prophetic tones, he says this indicates the great mission for the Church he leads: man is called on to take part in the love of Christ, but not as someone devoid of his own ill. The believer's task is to make sure that the glory of Christ is neither soiled nor misrepresented by the world.

Chapter 4 begins with the Magi, symbols of reason and knowledge, kneeling in adoration of the Baby who is God, and concludes with a great re-reading of the episode in the Temple (in which his concerned parents find their 'missing' twelve-year-old boy discussing Scriptures with doctors of the law), a lightning glimpse of the Passion that would culminate his mission.

The freedom of Jesus, Ratzinger writes, is "not that of the liberals". Because, he thought and learned as a man among men, but he responded to Another who determined his life and human fate.

The Pope concludes that whoever comes close to Jesus must necessarily be caught up in the mystery of his Passion, and that this, fundamentally, is what Christianity is.

Tuesday, Nov. 13, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of St. Frances Cabrini

Third from right, the saint's founder statue in St. Peter's Basilica.
ST. FRANCES XAVIER CABRINI (b Italy 1850, d USA 1917)
Virgin, Missionary, and Founder, Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Patron Saint of Immigrants
Born to a modest family in a town near Milan, she became a nun and soon rose to be the Mother Superior of an orphanage in Codogno where she taught. When the orphanage closed, she and seven of her colleagues set up the Missionary Sisters order. Her work brought her to the attention of Leo XIII who asked her to go the United States as a missionary instead of China which she would have preferred. With Chicago as her base, she and her order established dozens of schools, hospitals and orphanages for poor people, as well as material assistance and adult education for Italian immigrants. In 1946, she became the first US citizen to be canonized.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111311.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for the Holy Father.

A news conference was held to present the XXVII International Conferenza of the Pontifical Council for Ministry to Healthcare Workers On November 15-17 at the Vatican. The theme for this year's conference is "The Hospital as a Place for Evangelization".

If anyone out there still doubts the extent and virulence of liberal MSM's anti-Catholic hostility, this article analyzing just one sliver of that picture should be documentation enough. And concerns a topic about which the leading MSM huffed and puffed mightily to discredit Benedict XVI in the worst way possible even if they had to stretch thin facts or even lie outright to come up with their 'stories'. The Media Research Council is a conservative organization that runs the NewsBusters online journal analyzing the faults and failings of the media in general, particularly the liberal media in the United States. However, one obvious deficiency of this analysis is that the writer seems to be a secular voice himself, who is unable to provide any of the qualifying and relevant details that a Catholic writer might add and underscore, and in missing out on such details, the analysis thereby loses a significant part of the necessary context for appreciating the utter shamelessness of MSM anti-Catholic bias.

How the New York Times amped up reporting
on sexual abuse by priests and sought to
directly skewer Benedict XVI on the issue -
and ignores the past of its incoming CEO from BBC
By Matthew Philbin

November 12, 2012

It’s a horrifying and tragically familiar story: A beloved and trusted institution is rocked by allegations of sexual abuse of minors over many years. Intrepid reporters dig to learn how the crimes could have gone on so for so long, who knew about them, and if officials kept it quiet. Story after newspaper story leads with speculation that corruption may be systemic and the cover-up may go all the way to the man at the top.

At least, that’s how the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandals played out in the pages of The New York Times since 2001. Oddly, though, it’s not how the paper has been reporting a similar scandal involving Mark Thompson, the Times’s incoming CEO.

Thompson helmed the BBC in 2011 while the decision was made to abandon a story investigating accusations of pedophilia against long-time network star Jimmy Savile. Thompson takes over at the Times on Monday, Nov. 12.

Savile was an eccentric fixture at the BBC for decades, hosting programs that included kids’ shows. Since his death in October 2011, Savile has been accused of hundreds of incidents of sexual abuse of underage girls. Many allege the abuse occurred on BBC property and with girls as young as 12.

A current British police investigation has led to the arrest of Savile’s friend, 70s rocker Gary Glitter. Some alleged victims say Savile was at the center of an organized pedophilia ring within the BBC.

Thompson, a 32-year BBC veteran, claims to have known nothing about rumors about Savile over the years, and has said he had no hand in squelching the investigative report about the Savile charges last year. But his accounts and those of others at the BBC conflict and questions remain.

Given how the Times pursued, in its words, “questions about [Catholic Pope] Benedict XVI’s role in the handling of an abuse case while he was an archbishop in Germany,” the paper’s downplaying of questions about Thompson is particularly hypocritical.

During a two-month period in 2010, The Times ran 64 stories on Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandals then emerging in Europe. Twenty of those pieces opened with sentences linking Pope Benedict to abuse cases, and 13 of them ran on the front page.

Yet between Oct. 14 and Nov. 6, 2012, the Times ran just 16 news stories mentioning the Savile controversy. Only 10 of them mentioned Thompson and his imminent employment as CEO with the newspaper, and just one story on Savile made the cover.

Two years ago, The Times engaged in a frenzied effort to link the head of the Catholic Church to sex abuse scandals, plastering accusations on its front page day after day. Now, to learn of charges linking the new head of the Times to a sex abuse scandal, readers must go to the Europe page of the International section. The same crime, the same newspaper. Two very different approaches to reporting.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. He served as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, before spending more than two decades in charge of the Vatican's doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was also responsible for investigating sexual abuse cases. [It was made responsible for it only after 2001, when the scandal about abusive sex-offender priests erupted in the United States.]

In 2004, before he became Pope, Ratzinger reopened the case against Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ order of priests who was suspected of mass abuse of students under his care. In May 2006 the Pope disciplined Maciel. The Pope also met with abuse victims in Boston in 2008. [And subsequently, in Australia, Malta, the UK and Germany.]

Yet in the spring of 2010, as Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger was accused of allowing a pedophile priest to return to ministry when he served as archbishop of Munich in 1980. A separate allegation held that as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the 1990s he failed to defrock a Wisconsin priest who had abused deaf children 30 years before.

The New York Times couldn’t get enough of the story, and rather than making the pedophile priests or their victims the focus of reporting, the paper made the story about the Pope.

Even before the 1980 Munich case surfaced, the Times connected the Pope to the sex abuse scandals through his brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, who served as a choir director connected to a boarding school where former students alleged abuse. That March 10, 2010, story opened [re-opened] the floodgates on the paper's coverage of sex abuse in the Church.

In just over two months, the Times ran 64 news stories on the Pope addressing sex abuse scandals in the church, including in places like Ireland and California. The Times linked Benedict to the Wisconsin and Munich cases in 31 percent of those stories, including six of the first ten. Furthermore, 13 of those stories landed on the front page.

“A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made ‘serious mistakes’ in handling an abuse case while the Pope served as its archbishop,” began a front page story on March 13.

Three days later, another front page article began, “The priest at the center of a German sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled Pope Benedict XVI continued working with children for more than 30 years, even though a German court convicted him of molesting boys.”

The lead of a March 25 front page article read, “Top Vatican officials – including the future Pope Benedict XVI – did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.”

On that story, however, at least one Times op-ed columnist was more circumspect. That charge, wrote conservative Ross Douthat on March 28, “seems unfair. The case was finally forwarded to the Vatican by the archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, more than 20 years after the last allegation of abuse. With the approval of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy, the statute of limitations was waived and a canonical trial ordered. It was only suspended because the priest was terminally ill; indeed, pretrial proceedings were halted just before he died.”

The Times’s attempt to link Benedict to abuse cover-up in that case prompted an unusual response from Cardinal William J. Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Here's how the Times’s Rachel Donadio, target of much of the Vatican's criticisms, covered it on April 1:

---

A top Vatican official issued a detailed defense of Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of sexual abuse cases and extensively criticized The New York Times’s coverage, both in its news and editorial pages, as unfair to the pope and the church.

In a rare interview and a 2,400-word statement posted Wednesday on the Vatican Web site, the official, Cardinal William J. Levada, an American who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, praised Pope Benedict for vigorously investigating and prosecuting sexual abuse cases. He said The Times’s coverage had been “deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness.”

Cardinal Levada singled out several Times reporters and columnists for criticism, focusing particularly on an article describing failed efforts by Wisconsin church officials to persuade the Vatican to defrock a priest who had abused as many as 200 deaf boys from 1950 to 1974. The pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office when the case was referred there, in 1996.

He said the article wrongly “attributed the failure to accomplish this dismissal to Pope Benedict, instead of diocesan decisions at the time.” On Wednesday, the archbishop of Milwaukee said the pope should not be held responsible for mistakes that were made in Wisconsin, according to The Associated Press.

---

The Times, however, continued to pound the drum, saying the Pope faced “growing pressure to address his role in the handling of sexual abuse cases over the years.” Even an Arts section article on a string recital at the Vatican couldn’t resist leading with the scandals:

---

It had been a tough week for Pope Benedict XVI. Accusations about child abuse within the church continued to multiply. The focus of attack turned personal, with claims of cover-ups and quiet interventions in the Munich archdiocese decades ago, when the pope — then known as Joseph Ratzinger — was its archbishop. And if that weren’t enough, there were news reports of unholy happenings in the Regensburger Domspatzen, the celebrated German boys’ choir that the pope’s brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, directed for 30 years, though Monsignor Ratzinger was not implicated .

---

On it went. In an April 11, Week in Review piece, Daniel Wakin even talked of Benedict resigning. “He is elected for life, by a group of elderly men infused with the will of God,” Wakin sneered. “People address him as Holy Father, not Mr. President. After bishop of Rome, his second title is vicar of Jesus Christ. Can a man like this quit his job?”

The paper’s heated coverage finally cooled after a May 12 story, "Pope Issues Forceful Statement on Sexual Abuse Crisis." [The 'cooling' was not because the Pope had issued a statement but because after weeks of the most tenacious raking in the muck and raiding any closet they could for possible skeletons, neither the Times nor its equally assiduous sewer-dredging partner in crime, the AP, could substantiate their worst even if very tenuous allegations against Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, nor could they scavenge any new 'stories' that could even remotely link him to the sex abuses directly or indirectly. To think they 'cooled off' for any other reason than sheer lack of proof or any iota of salacious 'fact' that they could mine for the worst of innuendos is to be delusional and willfully blind to the media power games as played against the Church.]

The Times was nothing if not zealous in its determination to make the Church scandals that came to light in 2010 about dereliction of duty at the highest levels of the Church. But the paper has been far less resolute about smoking out a cover-up in the executive suites of an elite media organization – especially when the cover-up may involve a man who is soon to be one of its own.

Mark Thompson, who takes over as president and CEO of The New York Times Company on Nov. 12, was director general of the BBC from 2004 until 2011. He held that position when the BBC’s “Newsnight” program produced and abruptly canceled a segment investigating accusations of pedophilia against eccentric, long-time BBC star Jimmy Savile. The host of “Top of the Pops” and “Jim’ll Fix It” died in 2011 at 84.

In death, Savile now stands accused of sexually abusing more than 300 women and underage girls. Among the horrific allegations, one witness described Savile molesting a brain-dead woman while volunteering at a hospital. More common, but still horrifying, allegations involve raping girls as young as 12.

Rumors and outright allegations had swirled around Savile for decades, and he’d been investigated by police several times. According to some who’d worked with Savile in and out of the BBC over the years, his taste for underage girls was common knowledge.

In December 2011, the BBC’s “Newsnight” prepared a report on the charges, but it was killed by higher-ups in the organization. The next week the BBC ran a series of tribute documentaries to Savile.

Thompson has admitted to being told about the cancellation at a party, though it’s unclear whether he was given the reason for the cancellation. And his account has shifted. Thompson initially said that he didn't know about either the abuse allegations against Savile, or of the “Newsnight” investigation, but later admitted that he had heard that the investigation had been stopped.

“I was not notified or briefed about the Newsnight investigation, nor was I involved in any way in the decision not to complete and air the investigation,” Thompson said in a statement. But later reports indicate his office was informed.

The Times has been considerably less interested in reporting on this scandal than it had about Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church. In an Oct. 25 letter to Times staff about the expressing confidence in Thompson’s veracity, publisher Arthur Sulzberger wrote, “We have dedicated a significant amount of resources to this story and this is evident by the coverage we have provided our readers.”

Not compared to the resources and coverage thrown at the Church two years before. From Oct. 14, 2012, when the story broke in the paper, through Nov. 6, 2012, just 16 Times news stories mentioned the Savile controversy -- only one on the front page. Just 10 mentioned Mark Thompson and his imminent employment as chief executive of the Times.

Much to her credit, Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan called for the paper to “aggressively cover Mark Thompson’s role” in the scandal, and wondered whether the Times would indeed bring Thompson on board.

“His integrity and decision-making are bound to affect The Times and its journalism — profoundly,” Sullivan wrote. “It’s worth considering now whether he is the right person for the job, given this turn of events.” She suggested “publishing an in-depth interview with Mr. Thompson exploring what exactly he knew, and when, about what happened at the BBC.”

The Times hasn’t taken Sullivan up on that suggestion. And unlike Times reporters’ fervent attempts to link Pope Benedict to the sex abuse scandals and coverups on his watch, Thompson’s position as incoming chief executive of the Times only made the lead sentence in two stories. In one of those he was allowed to deny knowing about the squelching of the investigative report.

The Times kept most of its BBC reporting squarely focused on Savile and his alleged crimes. On Oct. 29, in the lone story on the Savile scandal to make the Times front page, Nicholas Kulish (who had contributed a number of stories on the church abuse scandal in 2010) didn’t refer to Thompson until the fifth paragraph.

The more comprehensive stories dealing with Thompson’s role noted discrepancies in his accounts of what he knew about the “Newsnight” investigation, but they appeared in the Times’ International - Europe pages. Outside of the Times public editor and some columnists, the paper has seemed happy to avoid asking hard questions about what Thompson knew and when he knew it.

The difference in the amount and tone of coverage between the BBC scandal and the Church scandal haven’t gone unremarked by Catholics. Catholic League President Bill Donohue noted on Oct. 24, 2012, that Thompson had worked for the BBC since 1979 but claimed that he’d “‘never heard any allegations or received any complaints’ about Savile.”

“If The New York Times were really on this story it would know that none of this is new,” Donohue wrote, citing a report by “British pundit Guido Fawkes: ‘Thompson was tackled about the axing [of the “Newsnight” report exposing Savile] at a pre-Christmas drinks party, so he cannot claim to be ignorant of it.’ Moreover, when the BBC was asked to respond, it refused. Do you know when all of this was reported? On February 9, 2012. If I know it, why doesn’t the New York Times?” Donohue asked.

Stocked with liberal and lapsed Catholics like columnist Maureen Dowd and former editor Bill Keller, who now seems amused that “I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ,” The New York Times has no love for traditional Catholicism.

But abuse did happen in the church, and it was covered up or handled negligently in many cases. Surely, the journalists of the Times would pursue any such stories with equal vigor. But in the case of Thompson, Savile and the BBC, they have not.

For $5 million per year, Thompson will head a company that, in Sulzberger’s words, believes in “strong, objective journalism that operates without fear or favor, no matter what it is covering.” One would expect the Times to put at least as much energy into reporting on the possibility that its new CEO was involved in a cover-up as it did for the head of a Church few at the paper belong to or agree with.

NB: This article does not even consider the ongoing scandal at the BBC itself where a couple of executives are resigning because they falsely accused a Conservative politician of sex abuse. They ought to have resigned back in 2005 when BBC produced a documentary that directly vilified Joseph Ratzinger by attributing to him a 1962 CDF document in Latin - in 1962, he was a professor of theology at the University of Bonn and had nothing to do with the Vatican - about how bishops should deal with sex offenses and other grave crimes committed by priests and claiming that the Church, in effect, ordered bishops to cover up such offenses - and that this was the basis for all the cover-ups since then. For some reason, the Vatican never officially protested and denounced that calumny and downright falsification, nor did any but a few valiant Catholic bloggers do so. Eventually a few Vatican prelates did speak out against it when a private Italian TV channel broadcast it in 2007, during which the Italian media preponderantly did not raise a single word against the blatant falsehood of the BBC documentary.

So here we have the double standard in reverse to the Thompson case. The BBC caves in and fires top executives because a program slandered a politician, but has not even issued a single word of retraction, much less apology, about its 2005 documentary that slandered Joseph Ratzinger so wrongly!... BTW, for people like the Wakins character quoted in the article - who is typical of his ilk - any object of their hostility and scorn must be 'guilty even if proven innocent beyond a reasonable doubt'. Ah, the selective irrationality - or irrational selectivity - of secular 'reason'!]

Meanwhile, the Church soldiers on to deal with the decades of unchecked abuse in the latter decades of the 20th century by the rotten apples in the Lord's orchard, about which she can never do enough, it seems... There's a new burst of secular Schadenfreude in Australia these days...

Cardinal Pell: Church will cooperate
with government investigation but
protests exaggeration of the issue


CANBERRA , Nov. 13 (Reuters) - The head of Australia's powerful Catholic Church acknowledged the "shame" of child sex abuse among the clergy and welcomed a sweeping inquiry on Tuesday, but also warned that the extent of the problem within his church had been exaggerated.

On Monday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard ordered a rare Royal Commission, the highest form of investigation in Australia, into how churches, government bodies and other organizations have dealt with possibly thousands of child sex abuse claims.

George Pell, Australia's only cardinal, said the Church would cooperate fully with the new inquiry, which can compel witnesses to give evidence and produce documents, and that he did not believe the Catholic church was the main perpetrator.

"We are not interested in denying the extent of misdoing in the Catholic church. We object to it being exaggerated, we object to it being described as 'the only cab on the rank'," said Pell, who is also Archbishop of Sydney.

"We acknowledge, with shame, the extent of the problem and I want to assure you that we have been serious in attempting to eradicate it and deal with it," he told reporters in Sydney.

Gillard called the inquiry in the face of mounting political pressure after explosive reports that orders within the Catholic Church had covered up abuse claims and hindered police inquires over several decades in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia's two most populous states.

Pell denied the Catholic Church actively covered up any child abuse and said comprehensive procedures introduced in 1992 ensured full cooperation with police and swift action against alleged abusers.

"We will cooperate fully. We have nothing we want to hide," Pell said.

Pell also said priests should refuse to hear confessions from suspected child abusers to ensure priests were not then bound by the confidentiality of the confessional.

"If the priest knows beforehand about such a situation, the priest should refuse to hear the confession, that would be my advice. I would never hear the confession of a priest who was suspected of such a thing," he said.

Late on Monday, a former police officer who investigated child abuse for decades, told Australian television the Royal Commission should examine aspects of the Catholic Church such as confession.

Former police officer Peter Fox sparked a nationwide outcry last week when he alleged the Catholic church had covered up abuse by priests in the Hunter Valley region north of Sydney. His allegations ultimately led to the new inquiry being called.

Gillard has yet to announce who will preside over it, or its terms of reference. She hopes to finalize the details by the end of this year but has refused to set a time limit on the Royal Commission, which could run for several years.

The Catholic Church is Australia's largest, with 5.4 million followers, representing about one in four Australians.

Definitely offtopic for this thread, but nonetheless a visually arresting story at the very least....Thanks to the UK Daily Mail for the pictures... The flood happened on Friday, November 11.


As the floodwaters rise, a few hardy tousrists try to make it out of the city...wading all the way to the train station perhaps.


Then the water rose high enough for some to swim in Piazza San Marco...


The Grand Canal has clearly overflowed into San Marco...



In less flooded areas, the coffee bars ply their business as usual...

Who will satisfy man's desire?
Translated from

Nov. 13, 2012

A few days ago, Prof. Damian Bacich of San Jose State Unviersity (California) acknowledged on these pages that "Obama continuing as president presupposes a challenge to the Catholic Church", but he adds right away that the challenge will not be negative if it serves to help the Church mature her presence in the public square.

He pointed out that it now falls on the authorities running the various and many Catholic health care and educational institutions to "find creative solutions and bear intelligent witness of the faith to a society that no longer accepts faith as an oobvious prerequisite for the life we live in common".

The truth is that Bacich's words also apply to Spain which has just convalidated same-sex marriage, and to most of the countries around us who have an ancient Christian tradition and are losing it.

Today's laws no longer express the culture born from centuries of Christian tradition, nor do they recognize natural law, and sometimes, they do not even protect that minimum space that means freedom for everyone, including Catholics.

Hostility is growing in the mass media, and the temptation of thinking ourselves as a citadel besieged has taken hold, not without reason, among many Catholics. How true it is that 50 years after the Second Vatican Council opened, the spiritual desert has very much advanced in the Church!

Well, we could choose to indulge in infinite lamentation united with acid and sharp-tongued dialectic, and consequently dig ourselves into the trenches for a long time, or engage in a new mission that accepts without reservations that faith - and its ethico-cultural consequences - is no longer an obvious presupposition in the common life of mankind. I would dare to say that such a premise is the basis of all of Benedict XVI's preaching.

The events that Bacich refers to took place even as the Pope was giving a memorable catechesis on faith and desire. Let us start by saying that the question of desire has been an inflammable subject and difficultly manageable for teachers, catechists and preachers.

Of course, no one would reject the best patristic and medieval tradition that says the desire for God is inscribed in man's heart, as the Catechism tells us. But the word still remains rather inconvenient (or is it?) - it lends itself to several meanings, it is used in contexts that are not 'Christian-friendly', and above all, it exposes us to great dangers if we do not subject it to strict control.

And why not say it - it is almost better to follow some other path, more than one if need be. That was how it was in many times and places throughout the Church's history. Without rejecting it as a point of departure, our consideration of it has shaded off into its educational value... Just in case.

One impressive thing about Benedict XVI is that at no time is he at risk of burning his tongue with his own words. Indeed, he manages [better yet, manipulates] words with the mastery of great familiarity that he is able to create a symphony that we can only follow, simply because we recognize ourselves in his words unless we are self-defensive.

He starts by acknowledging - impossible to be more realistic than he is - that "many of our contemporaries might object that they absolutely do not feel any desire for God. He no Longer is the awaited one, the desired one, but at best, a reality which leaves them indifferent".

But he goes on to say that basically, "what we have called 'a desire for God' has not completely disappeared and continues to manifest itself in many ways in the heart of today's man."

"Human desire", the Pope continued, "always tends towards a certain concrete good, often not spiritual at all, but nonetheless, man faces the question of what is truly 'good', something that is distinct from himself, that he cannot construct, but that he is called on to acknowledge. Who can truly satisfy man's desire?"

Of course, desire can lead into tortuous byways, it can seek a response in mortal labyrinths, it can transform itself into a maddening spiral. Yes, but without desire, man simply does not exist, as our own poet Machado has said.

It would be absurd if the risk of living kept us all at home; it would be tragic if the labyrinths of life would lead us to deny its original impulse, that which made [the Italian poet [Eugenio] Montale write: "Everything has been written far beyond us".

Every desire that arises in the human heart is an echo of that fundamental desire that can never be fully satisfied, Benedict XVI pointed out, and that is why the Christian should never fear desire - for friendship, for beauty, for creation, for love.

The task of the educator is to transform the initial ecstasy into a pilgrimage, into an emergence of the I enclosed in itself towards its liberation by delivering itself. Not in order that desire be flattened out and loses its impulse, but to protect its deeper truth, to project it like a beam of light towards its true fulfillment.

The drama of the present does not consist in the vivacity of desires but in their brutal reduction and manipulation, and in the false responses that they elicit.

All this seems to me of vital importance for the new evangelization, if it is to be more than a slogan. Because our task as Christians is not to police desire but to be witnesses to the Only One who can satisfy desire.

That is why the Pope keeps saying, "Man knows well what does not satisfy him, but he cannot imagine or define what would make him experience the happiness for which he carries nostalgia in his heart... He is searching for the Absolute, even if he is a searcher who makes small and uncertain steps... but already, the experience of desire, of the restless heart, as St. Augustine called it, attests that man is, deep down, a beggar for God".

Benedict does not gloss over the fact that everyone - believers and non-believers - needs to follow a path of purification and 'healing' of desire. But he immediately warns that "it is not about suffocating the desire that exists in man's heart but to liberate it so that it can reach its genuine height".

The Pope opens a window of fresh air for parents, educators and priests, and I would even say that, without the recourse he describes, it would be difficult to achieve an authentically mature faith, faith such as that which led Peter to say, "And where would we go? Only you have the words of eternal life!"

And if we had any remaining doubts, the Pope concludes the symphony by inviting us to make this pilgrimage and to feel "that we are brothers to all men, travelling companions, even of those who do not believe, of those who are searching, of those who have stopped questioning themselves sincerely about the dynamism of their own desire for truth and goodness".

I don't see better equipment nor a better compass for these times of inclemency that we are going through on both sides of the Atlantic. Our calling is not to hold the Maginot Line, but to undertake ideally the Way of St. James, a pilgrimage in which we will meet up with bandits and farmers, heroes and brigands, out in the open, with each one called to measure his desire against fellow Christians who live and build.

Wednesday, Nov. 14, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time
ST. GERTRUDE THE GREAT (Germany 1256-1302), Benedictine Nun and Mystic
She was the first subject in October 2010 of the Holy Father's catechetical cycle on great female Christian figures of the Middle Ages
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101006...
One of the great mystics of the Middle Ages, her spiritual life was a deeply personal union with Jesus and his Sacred Heart, leading her into the very life of the Trinity. Gertrude lived the rhythm of the liturgy, where she found Christ. In the liturgy and Scripture, she found the themes and images to enrich and express her piety. There was no clash between her personal prayer life and the liturgy.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111412.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

General Audience - In his catechetical cycle for the Year of Faith, the Holy Fahter today spoke of
three pathways to God - through the world, man himself, and the Church - even as man must remember
that it is God who seeks us out first.

The Vatican announced a joint news confernce on Tuesday, November 20, by Rizzoli publishers and the Vatican publishing
house to present Vol. 3 of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's JESUS OF NAZARETH, 'The childhood of Jesus'.

The Pope greets guests, ignoring the guest closest to him. (CNS/Paul Haring)

A neat little sidebar from Monday's visit to the elderly of Sant'Eigidio... From CNS's papal photographer...

Pope not bugged by small creatures
by Paul Haring


VATICAN CITY, Nov. 12 — This is not news, nor is it important in the scheme of things. This is just a simple blog post about a simple matter.

On Monday. a bug landed on Pope Benedict XVI’s forehead during a visit to a home for the elderly in Rome.

Instead of brushing his guest away, the pope stayed focused and continued greeting other guests. Five seconds later, the bug left on his own.

The small guest, right, flies away after spending five seconds meeting the pope.

This was not the Pope’s first encounter with a wayward insect. In 2009, a spider took his time climbing up the Pope’s cape as he gave a speech inside the presidential palace in the Czech Republic. While the pope seemed not to notice and did not react, the incident drew a lot of international media attention. In fact, the spider garnered more media coverage than the Pope’s speech.

Pope Benedict XVI is known for his immense powers of concentration. This is likely why he seems to not be bothered by little creatures.

One thing that has not been commented enough upon by commentators galore on the Pope's visit to the Sant'Egidio home for the elderly was that, in more ways than one, the Pope himself is the best proof of his now much-quoted remark - "It is beautiful [or wonderful] to be old"!


TV anchor Stefano Maria Paci, who covers the Pope for Italy's SKy TV, wrote this beautiful reportage on the Pope's visit to the Sant'Egidio home 'Viva gli anziani!'.

The elderly of Sant'Egidio:
Tea with Benedict XVI -
and rediscovering that life is good
by Stefano Maria Paci
Vatican Anchor, Italian Sky TV
Translated from

November 14, 2012

"To have tea with the Pope is certainly not something that happens every day, so you will excuse me if I am still a bit emotional and confused," the elderly woman says.

I sit down at a table which still has cookies, teacups and a slice of strudel from that tea. Benedict XVI had just taken his leave from the apartment of Signora Maria, where he had sat down with her and one of her friends, Giovanna, later meeting with the other occupants of this home for the elderly run by the Sant'Egidio Community on the Gianiculum Hill overlooking the Vatican.

As he left the home, the Pope said, "I leave this place feeling younger" - having spent some time in a 'family home' for people his age.

Signora Maria has gentle eyes, well-groomed hair and the kind smile of an old aunt. And much faith.

"I realize now that you ask me", she notes, "that my friend Giovanna and I hardly gave the Pope a chance to speak. We spoke to him about our life. The difficulties we encounter, those that we have had. And the fact that, notwithstanding, faith accompanies our days, and because of this, there is no sadness. He listened attentively, he ate a cookie, and then told us he was really happy to be with us, that this visit was giving him a great deal".

It might have been just any weekday, but there was nothing ordinary about Monday, Nov. 12, at the Viva gli Anziani (Long live the elderly) home. The forecast had been for rain, and in many parts of Italy, floods were disastrous, but during the Pope's visit, there was not a single raindrop.

Things were certainly 'upside down/, since the protagonists of the day were the elderly, those whom society mostly ignores, or considers to be obstacles not just for their families but for politicians and institutions.

And all the persons who had waited for hours crowded on the street outside the home - many of them young people - might well have envied the elderly in the home who could meet and talk to the Pope rather informally.

And how strange it is that this German Pope - who does not have the sympathy of the mass media, who for years have (mis)treated him as they have not done with any Pope in modern times even if he is adored by the Catholic world, who have come to his audiences and Angelus assemblies in numbers greater than his beloved predecessor, now Blessed John Paul II - has often been described by the media as someone who does not remotely possess his predecessor's communicative abilities, and yet, everytime he finds himself free from formal protocol, he astonishes and touches the hearts of all those who see or meet him.

And so it was Monday, at the Viva gli Anziani home, when he was not a Pontiff meeting a 'category' of persons, the elderly, but was first of all an elderly man himself who had become Pope and who was meeting other elderly persons, exchanging looks of reciprocal sympathy, person to person.

"I am here among you as the Bishop of Rome but also as an elderly man visiting his contemporaries," he said to them. He laughed at their jokes, lovingly caressed those who seem to be afflicted most in health, talking to them and listening to their stories, so many and so diverse, and often visibly moved.

He goes from one room to another, from one apartment to the next, not like a head of state taking a census of his subjects or a head of government who seeks their consensus, but as a man who is close to others who may be suffering from living out their old age with difficulty. But who have also learned much from life. Every room, every apartment, a story, a life recounted in brief words.

There is Margherita, who was a professor of art history. Some of the volunteers who work at the home were her students, who told the Pope, "When her situation had become truly difficult, we brought her here".

"You did right," sid the Pope, who chats with her about the books on Caravaggio and Fra Angelico on her table. Volunteers help her as she gets up to kiss the Fisherman's ring on the Pope's left hand.

In the next apartment, the Pope meets Vincenzo who is introduced to him as "the youngest here - he is only 73". "So then, you are very young," the Pope says, not infallibly, "you are 15 years younger than me!" Benedict XVI is, of course,'only' 85, not 88.

Another apartment is occupied by Vincenzo and Sandro, who were masons and street pavers - illness had made them unable to live by themselves and so they came to this home. "The Lord has been good to us," they told the Pope, who replied, "In our old age, friends help us live better".

Then it was the turn of Felicetta, white-haired and wearing her Sunday best: "Dear Pope," she said, taking his hands affectionately and addressing him familiarly [second person singular, rather than the deferential third person singular], as if he were a relative she had not seen in a long time, "how happy we all are to see you!" To which he replied, "I too am happy to be here!"

The Pope also met Mario and Anna, who prepare the food for the residents of the home who have no relatives to care for them, as well as for other elderly who live by themselves at home.

"They are often by themselves and rather sad, Holy Father", Mario said, "but on Sundays, they are full of joy..."

"Because they can be with others and it is the day of the Lord", the Pope broke in. "Yes, but especially because they can eat well!", Mario said. The Pope raised his hands to heaven and broke out laughing - he was not expecting that.

Another volunteer, Pierina, helps gypsy children and lives in Tor de Cenci, a place which the city recently cleared of gypsy makeshift homes. "It was terrible," she said, "especially for the children.

"How sad for the kids!" the Pope exclaimed softly. And Pierina said, "I have continued to go visit them where they were taken". The Pope said, "Brava! They must be very grateful to you". All the time, he was holding Pierina's hands tightly in his, as if to ask her to bring something of him to the children.

The Pope's white hair, escaping from his white zucchetto, underscores what he has in common with the white-haired wards in this home, persons who have nothing except what the home provides them, except for those who still have families who come to visit them.

And the hands...

"That contact between the finger of God and the finger of man," Papa Ratzinger had said some days earlier in the Sistine Chapel, on the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes, "demonstrates that the world is not a product of obscurity, of chaos or of absurdity, but that it comes from an act of love: God relating to his creatures".

At the Sant'Egidio home on Monday, hands also said a lot. All the time, the Pope's hands were entwined with those of the person he was talking to. The hands of a man who meets all kinds of men and women, the hands of a Pope who holds in his the hands of those that God has given him as children, no matter what their age.

Like Enrichetta, who is 91, and who was therefore 6 when the Pope was born. In a country far from here. But here, their paths have crossed, on this home atop the Gianiculum hill.

She greets him formally in the name of the community: "I have learned so much from my friendship with persons young and old alike what it is to help others who are even weaker than me. I have learned to defend the value of life, especially those of older people who have been abandoned by their families, when visiting them in other institutions and taking up their cause as the Sant'Egidio Community does. I do not feel useless. With age, I do not eat as much as I used to, but prayer is my principal nourishment".

The Pope met with Attilia, who has passed the century mark. He takes her hands in his like a grandson would.

He goes on to an apartment shared by two 90-year-old women. "They have both lost their husbands and children, and so they came to us," he was told. Benedict XVI blesses them with a sign of the Cross on their foreheads.

He was introduced to Maria, who was born in Sotto il Monte, birthplace of John XXIII. "So you knew Pope John," the Pope asked her. "Yes," she nodded, seated but outfitted with a nasogastric tube. "She has been receiving food this way for three years," a volunteer told the Pope, "but she is happy". He said, "Yes, because she is in your good hands". And Maria nodded again.

Good hands is what the volunteers represent - young people, persons in midlife, even some elderly - who help the wards of Sant'Egidio face their daily life and to keep their dignity, whatever their personal circumstances.

There is a family from Haiti, who had lost all they possessed in the terrible floods in recent years, including all their relatives. But good Christians, whom Christ had taken hold of, took hold of them in turn, and brought them here to the care of more 'good hands'.

The Viva gli Anziani home is a beautiful and happy place. It is housed in a multi-unit building with a beautiful garden in the Janiculum, which is a prestigious address in Rome. A happy 'island', perhaps, but the Sant'Egidio officials availed of the Pope's visit to speak to them of their plans.

Its president, Mario Marazziti, told the Pope: "All it takes would be 60 cents a day for each needy senior citizen so that every elderly person in Rome can be helped at home, without having to enter institutes, hospitals or homes for the aged. If such a project could get started in one city, it could become a reference and model for everyone since it shows that it can be done".

Meanwhile, this home on the Janiculum is one attempt, among so many carried out in the Catholic world, to assist those who are most in need, out of the sheer abundance of gratitude felt by those who have found meaning in their life and in the world.

"I know very well the difficulties, the problems and the limitations of old age," the Pope said to the residents in his formal address, but added realistically, "and I know that for many, these difficulties have been aggravated by the economic crisis".

But, speaking as an elderly among his fellow elderly, the Pope continued: "I wish to tell all elderly people, even as I am aware of the difficulties brought along by our advanced age, that it is a beautiful thing to be old. We should never allow ourselves to be imprisoned by sadness. We have received the gift of long life. Life is beautiful even at our age, notwithstanding the obstacles. May we always carry the joy of feeling loved by God, rather than sadness. When the days seem long and empty, made more difficult by the lack of tasks and of contact with others, never be discouraged. You are a richness for society, even in sickness and suffering".

And perhaps the most moving statement: "The prayers of the elderly can protect the world, perhaps aiding society in more effective ways than the active efforts of many".

Words from an elderly Pope, soon to be 86. who has a fresh outlook on reality: that there is another world, the world of the elderly, in this world.

GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY







Pathways to God
in today's world

November 14, 2012

At the General Audience held today in Aula Paolo VI, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of finding pathways to God in today’s world where faith is often considered irrelevant or useless - remembering, always, that it not is we who seek God, but God who seeks us out and possesses us.



Here is Vatican Radio's translation of the catechesis:

---

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Last Wednesday we reflected on the desire for God that the human being carries deeply within himself. Today I would like to continue and deepen this aspect, meditating briefly on some pathways to knowing God, remembering, however, that God's initiative always precedes any action of man, and even in the journey towards Him, it is He who first enlightens us, guides us and leads us, while always respecting our freedom.

And it is always He who allows us to enter into his intimacy, revealing and gifting us with the grace to be able to welcome this revelation in faith. Let us never forget the experience of St. Augustine who said "it is not we who seek or possess the Truth, but the Truth that seeks us out and possesses us".

However, there are paths that can open the human heart to knowledge of God', there are signs that lead to Him. Of course, often we are in danger of being dazzled by the glitter of worldliness, which makes us less able to travel these paths or to read those signs. However, God does not tire in looking for us, He is faithful to the humanity He created and redeemed, He remains close to our lives, because He loves us.

And 'this a certainty that must accompany us each and every day, even if certain widespread mentalities make it increasingly difficult for the Church and the Christian to communicate the joy of the Gospel to all creatures and lead everyone to an encounter with Jesus, the one Saviour of the world.

This, however, is our mission, the mission of the Church, and every believer must live it joyfully, feeling it to be his or her own mission, through a life truly animated by faith, marked by charity, service to God and to others, and capable of radiating hope. This mission shines above all in the holiness to which all are called.

Today difficulties and trials are not lacking for the faith, often poorly understood, challenged, rejected. St. Peter said to his Christians: "Always be ready to respond, but with gentleness and respect, to anyone who asks you for the hope that is in your hearts" (1 Pt 3,15).

In the past, in the West, in a society that was considered Christian, faith was the environment in which we moved; the reference and adhesion to God were, for most people, part of everyday life. Rather, it was those who did not believe who had to justify their disbelief.

In our world, the situation has changed and, increasingly, the believer must be able to account for the reasons of his faith. Blessed John Paul II, in the Encyclical Fides et Ratio, emphasized how faith is put to the test in these times, contradicted by subtle and insidious forms of theoretical and practical atheism (cf. nn. 46-47).

From the Enlightenment onwards, criticism of religion has intensified, and history has also been marked by the presence of atheistic systems, in which God was considered a mere projection of the human mind, an illusion, and the product of a society already distorted by alienation.

The last century saw a strong and growing secularism, in the name of the absolute autonomy of man, considered as the measure and artisan of reality, no longer considered to have been created "in the image and likeness of God."

In our time there is a particularly dangerous phenomenon for the faith: a form of atheism that we define as 'practical', which does not deny the truths of faith or religious rituals, but simply considers them irrelevant to everyday existence, detached from life, useless.

Often, then, people believe in God in a superficial way, but live "as if God did not exist" (etsi Deus non daretur). In the end, however, this way of life is even more destructive, because it leads to indifference towards faith and the question of God

In reality, man is effectively separated from God, reduced to a single dimension, the horizontal, and this very reduction is one of the fundamental causes of the totalitarianisms that have had tragic consequences in the last century, as well as the crisis of values that we see in our current reality.

By obscuring any reference to God, the ethical horizon is also obscured, to make room for relativism and an ambiguous concept of freedom, which instead of being liberating ends up binding man to idols. The temptations Jesus faced in the desert prior to his public ministry represent the "idols" that fascinate man, when he does not look beyond himself.

When God loses centrality, man loses his proper place, he no longer finds his place in creation, in relationships with others. That ancient wisdom evoked in the myth of Prometheus is still relevant: man thinks he can become "god" himself, master of life and death.

Faced with this framework, the Church, faithful to Christ, never ceases to affirm the truth about man and his destiny. The Second Vatican Council succinctly states: "The root reason for human dignity lies in man's call to communion with God. From the very circumstance of his origin man is already invited to converse with God. For man would not exist were he not created by Gods love and constantly preserved by it; and he cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and devotes himself to His Creator." (Gaudium et Spes, 19).

What answers, then, is the faith called to give with "gentleness and respect", to the atheism, skepticism and indifference towards the vertical dimension, so that the man of our time can continue to question himself about the existence of God and continue to travel along the paths that lead to Him?

I would like to mention some ways, resulting both from natural reflection and the power of faith. I would like to very briefly sum them up in three words: the world, man, faith.

First: the world. St. Augustine, who in his life long sought the Truth until he was seized by the Truth, has a beautiful and famous page, in which he affirms: "Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky... question all these realities. All respond: 'See, we are beautiful'. Their beauty is a profession. (But) these beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One who is not subject to change?" (Sermo 241, 2: PL 38, 1134).

I think we need to recover and restore to our contemporaries the ability to contemplate creation, its beauty, its structure. The world is not a shapeless magma, but the more we know, the more we discover the amazing mechanisms, the more we see a pattern, we see that there is a creative intelligence.

Albert Einstein said that the laws of nature “reveal such a superior reason that all rational thought and human law is but a very insignificant reflection by comparison". (The World as I see it, Rome 2005). Thus a first path leading to the discovery of God is careful contemplation of creation.

The second word: man. Again St. Augustine has a famous quote that says that God is closer to me than I am to myself (cf. Confessions, III, 6, 11). From here he formulates the invitation: "Do not go outside yourself, come back into yourself: truth dwells in the heart of man" (True Religion, 39, 72).

This is another aspect that we risk losing in the noisy and distracted world in which we live: the ability to stop and take a deep look within ourselves and read that thirst for the infinite that we carry within, pushing us to go further and towards that Someone who can satisfy it.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God's existence" (No. 33).

The third word: faith. Especially in the reality of our times, we must not forget that a path to knowledge and encounter with God is the life of faith. He who believes is united with God, is open to His grace, to the power of charity. So his existence becomes a witness not of himself, but of the Risen Christ, and his faith is not afraid to show itself in everyday life,

it is open to dialogue that expresses deep friendship for the journey of every man, and knows how to bring the light of hope to the need for redemption, happiness, and future.

Faith, in fact, is an encounter with God who speaks and acts in history and which converts our daily life, transforming our mentality, system of values, choices and actions. It is not illusion, escapism, a comfortable shelter, sentimentality, but involvement in every aspect of life and proclamation of the Gospel, the Good News which can liberate all of man.

Christianity, a community that is industrious and faithful to the plan of God who loved us first, is a privileged path for those who are indifferent or doubt His existence and His action. This, however, requires that each one of us render our witness of faith more transparent, purifying our life to conform it to Christ.

Today many have a limited understanding of the Christian faith, because they identify it with a mere system of beliefs and values, and not so much with the truth of God revealed in history, who is eager to communicate with man face to face, in a relationship of love with Him.

In fact, the foundation of every doctrine or value is the event of the encounter between man and God in Christ Jesus. Christianity, before being a moral or ethical value, is the experience of love, of welcoming the person of Jesus. For this reason, the Christian and Christian communities must first look to and help others to look to Christ, the true path that leads to God.

---

Pope meets former Lebanese
Prime Minister after GA today

November 14, 2012

At the end of today’s General Audience in the Vatican, Benedict XVI met with former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The news was confirmed by the Vice-Director of the Vatican Press Office, Fr. Ciro Benedettini.

The meeting took place in the reception room adjacent to the Paul VI Hall but no further information was given. Hariri, who arrived in the Vatican yesterday, has also met with the Secretary for Relations with States, Mgr. Dominique Mamberti.

According to Lebanese sources, Saad Hariri, the current leader of the 14 March opposition movement, was accompanied by his Chief of Staff, Nader Hariri, and his advisor, Daoud Sayegh. Last September, Benedict XVI himself paid a visit to Lebanon.

A couple of belated postings of news from the Vatican...

Italian Parliament marks
10th anniversary of John Paul II visit
Translated from

Nov. 14, 2012

A commemorative ceremony was held yesterday, Wednesday, at the Sala della Regina of Palazzo Montecitorio, site of the Italian Paliament, for the tenth anniversary of a visit made to that assembly by John Paul II. Representing the Vaticna was Deputy Secretary of State for General Affairs, Mons Angelo Becciu, who read message written for the occasion by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. The following is a translation of the message:

---

November 14, 2012

To Their Excellencies
Sen. Renato Schifani, President of the Senate of the Republic
The Honorable Gianfranco Fini, President of the Chamber of Deputies
Palazzo Montecitorio
Rome

Most Distinguished Presidents,

For the ceremony commemorating the tenth anniversary of the visit of His Holiness John Paul II to the Italian Parliament, the oly Father Benedict XVI wishes to extend to Your Excellencies and to all the Senators and Deputies his heartfelt greeting, which he also extends affectionately to His Eminance, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian bishops' conference.

The joint public session of Parliament on November 14, 2002 in the Great Hall of Montecitorio constitues a memorable page in the histopry of relationships between Italy and the Holy See, an event that was particularly valuable because of the authoritativeness of the Holy Father's venerable figure who had strongl;y wanted the meeting despite his already precarious health condition.

The unanimously warm welcome which he received upon entering teh hall and the consensus expressed after his address are imprinted in the minds of everyone who was present that day.

After ten years, in a social context which has been made more difficult because of the consequences of an economic crisis which even then was foreseeable, we must recall his inivtation to draw on the life blood of Christianity which has vitalized the social and cultural identity of Italy and her mission in Europe and in the world.

This spiritual and ethical patrimony can always offer, even in difficult times, adequate resources for the renewal of consciences and for the corresponding orientation towards the common good, especially for those who are called to be members of Parliament.

For this, the Supreme Pontiff hopes that the constant collaboration between Italy and the Holy See, as well as between the State and the Church in Italy, may continue to sustain the journey of the Italian nation, especially families in their primary educational and social function, and all citizens in their sense of civic responsibility.

To this end, he assures you of being remembered in his prayers, and from the hear,t he invokes on you, on all the members of both houses ofd Parliament and on their respective activities, the abyundance of heavnely blessings.

In formulating my own personal good wishes for your high service towards the good of the nation, I avail of the occasion to confirm to you my highest consideration.

+Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone
Secretary of State

---

Reorganization at
Congregation for Divine Worship
by Andrea Tornielli
Adapted from the English service of

November 14, 2012

The Vatican Secretariat of State has formally approved the reorganization of the Congregation for Divine Worship, after Benedict XVI indicated his assent last September.

involved the creation of new offices that will become operational as of next year.

The main change is the establishment of an office, specifically dedicated to liturgical art and music (which Vatican Insider predicted in a previous article), and will provide guidelines to ensure that the music performed at Mass and the design of new churches are adequate to the mysteries of faith that are celebrated in liturgy.

The changes in the dicastery led by Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera come just one year after the motu proprio "Quaerit semper" issued by Benedict XVI on 27 September 2011, which put the Roman Rota in charge of two issues which until then had been the responsibility of the Congregation for Divine Worship: the invalidation of priestly ordination and dispensation from unconsummated marriages.

In the text, the Pope explained: "In present circumstances it has seemed appropriate for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to focus mainly on giving a fresh impetus to promoting the Sacred Liturgy in the Church, in accordance with the renewal that the Second Vatican Council desired, on the basis of the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium."

The dicastery can now focus its efforts on wide-ranging ctivities to promote the "ars celebrandi", faithfulness to the conciliar constitution, and the instructions of the new missal.

The dicastery now has the following main offices: two new offices on liturgical doctrine will deal with the issue in the English and Latin languages; a new office for legal and disciplinary issues; and the aforementioned office for liturgical art and music [whose concern will be limited to art and music used in liturgy, not other forms of sacred art and music.

Thursday, Nov. 15, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time

ST. ALBERTUS MAGNUS (ALBERT THE GREAT) (Germany, 1193-1280)
Dominican, Philosopher, Bishop, Doctor of the Church
Benedict XVI devoted his catechesis on 3/24/10 to his fellow German
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100324...
Considered the greatest German scholar, theologian and philosopher of the Middle Ages, Albert the Great advocated the 'peaceful coexistence' of science and religion. In his writings, Albert commented on all of Aristotle's works and tried to explain as much as was known of the world at the time. He became a mentor to Thomas Aquinas, whom he outlived. After serving as Provincial in Germany for the Dominican order, he was made Bishop of Regensburg but gave it up after three years, preferring to return to teaching in Cologne where he died at age 87. He was canonized by Pius XI in 1931 and named a Doctor of the Church ['Doctor of Science'].
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111512.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

- 11 Bishops of France on ad-limina visit. (This resumes the French bishops' ad-limina visits in 2012,
which began in the summer._

- Participants in the annual plenary session of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
Address in Italian.


One year ago today...

The Italian clothing firm of Benetton unveiled a singularly disgusting 'shock ad' campaign titled 'UNHATE' that hit a new low in bad taste - three images featured the Pope and the Imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar mosque/university, Obama and Presidsnt Hu of China, and Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, all photoshopped as if they were kissing each other on the mouth. The image with the Pope appeared as a giant poster on the Sant'Angelo bridge within view of the Vatican. Benetton subsequently withdrew the poster and the images showing the Pope from its ad campaign, and months later, 'settled' a legal suit filed by the Vatican by pledging to pay an unpsecified amount to one of the Pope's charities.

Benedict XVI to Christian Unity Council:
'Both ecumenism and eangelization
demand the dynamism of conversion'

November 15, 2012

The 'scandal' of divided Christian witness and the importance of working for the full, visible unity of the Church was at the heart of Pope Benedict’s words on Thursday to members of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity which is holding is annual plenary assembly here in Rome this week.

The theme of the five day Council meeting is ‘The significance of ecumenism for the New Evangelisation’.

In his address to the participants, Pope Benedict stressed the importance of all Christians 'bearing witness together' to the living God, despite continuing divisions and difficulties…

The spiritual poverty of many people today, the Pope noted, is a challenge for all Christians and he said the commitment of other Churches for renewed evangelization is also a sign of hope. Echoing the words of the Second Vatican Council decree on ecumenism Unitatis redintegratio, the Pope said "our continuing division openly contradicts the will of Christ and (is) a source of scandal which damage our credibility and our ability to preach the Gospel to all people.



Here is a full translation of the Pope's address:

---

Your Eminences,
Venerated Brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters:

I am happy to meet you all today, members and consultants of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, on the occasion of your plenary meetings. I address a heartfelt greeting to each and everyone, especially to your President, Cardinal Kurt Koch, whom I thank for the kind words he expressed in your behalf, to the Secretary and all those who work in the dicastery, with my appreciation and gratitude for their work in the service of a cause that is so decisive for the life of the Church.

This year, your Plenary is focused on the theme of "The importance of ecumenism for the new evangelization'. This choice places you in continuity with the work carried out by the recent Ordinary General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod, and in a way, you help give concrete form, according to your dicastery's specific perspective, to the propositions that emerged from that assembly.

Moreover, your current discussions fit into the context of the Year of Faith which I intended to be a right time to repropose to everyone the gift of faith in the Risen Christ, in the year that we mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

As you know, the Council Fathers underscored the very close link that exists between the task of evangelization and overcoming the divisions that exist among Christians.

"Such a division," says the decree, "openly contradicts the will of Christ,and is a scandal to the world which damages the holy cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature" (No. 1).

The statement echoes the 'priestly prayer' of Jesus when, addressing his Father, he asks that his disciples "may all be one... that the world may believe that you sent me" (Jn 17,1).

In this great prayer, four times he invokes unity for his disciples at the time and for those in the future, and twice he says that the reason for such unity is so that the world may 'recognize' them as messengers of the Father. Thus there is a close link between the fate of evangelization and the testimony of unity among Christians.

An authentic ecumenical journey cannot be carried out ignoring the crisis of faith in vast regions of the planet, among them those that had been the first to welcome the announcement of the Gospel and where Christian life had flourished for centuries. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the numerous signs that attest to a persistent need for spirituality which is manifested in various ways.

The spiritual poverty among many of our contemporaries, who no longer perceive the absence of God in their life as a privation, represents a challenge to all Christians. In this sense, we who believe in Christ are called upon to return to the essence, the heart of our faith, in order that we may all bear witness together to the world about the living God, a God who knows and loves each of us, in whose gaze we live, a God who awaits the response of our love in our everyday life.

Therefore the commitment of Christian churches and other Christian ecclesial communities for a renewed announcement of the Gospel to contemporary man is a reason for hope. Indeed, to bear witness to the living God, who made himself close to us in Christ, is the most urgent imperative for all Christians, which is also an imperative that unites us despite the incomplete ecclesial communion that we continue to experience.

We must not forget that what unites us - namely, our faith in God, Father and Creator who revealed himself in his Son Jesus Christ, pouring forth the Spirit who vivifies and sanctifies. This is the faith that we received in Baptism and the faith that together we can all profess, in hope and in love,

In the light of the priority of faith, one can understand the importance of the theological dialogs and conversations with other Christian churches and ecclesial communities in which the Catholic Church is engaged.

Even if we cannot foresee for the immediate future the possibility of re-=establishing full communion among Christians, they allow us to obtain - along with resistances and obstacles - a wealth of experiences, of spiritual life and theological reflections which become stimuli for an even more profound witnessing to our faith.

But ewe must not forget that the goal of ecumenism is the visible unity among divided Christians. This unity is not a work that we can achieve by ourselves as humans. We must commit ourselves to it with all our strength, but we must also acknowledge, that in the last analysis, this unity is a gift of God - ti can only come from the Father through the Son, because the Church is his Church.

In this perspective, we can see the importance of invoking this visible unity from the Lord, but it also emerges that the quest for this goal is relevant for the new evangelization. The fact of walking together towards that goal is a positive reality, provided that the various Christian Churches and ecclesial communities do not get held up along the way, by accepting the contradictory differences as something normal or the best that can be achieved.

Instead, it is in full communion in the faith, in the sacraments and in the ministry, that the present and working power of God in the world is made concretely evident. Through the visible unity of the disciples of Christ, a unity that is humanly inexplicable, the action of God that surpasses the worldly tendency to disgregation can be made recognizable.

Dear friends, I hope that the Year of Faith may contribute to the progress of the ecumenical journey. Unity is, on the one hand, the fruit of faith, and on the other, a means and almost a prerequisite for announcing the faith in an increasingly credible way to those who still do not know the Savior or who, having previously received the Gospel, have almost forgotten this precious gift.

True ecumenism, recognizing the primacy of divine action, demands above all patience, humility, and abandoning ourselves to the will of God. Ultimately, both ecumenism and the new evangelization require the dynamism of conversion, understood as a sincere will to follow Christ and to fully adhere to the will of the Father.

Thanking you once more, I gladly invoke the Apostolic Blessing on everyone.

---

The following two stories are both controversial - but the first one is ultimately trivial, whereas the second had major implications for one of the most popular of modern-day saints....


Left, the business-card size papyrus fragment presented as 'The Gospel of Jesus's wife'; right, Harvard Prof. Karen King, who presented the 'finding' without trying to authenticate it first.

Quite a number of respected scholars - Biblicists and papyrologists - immediately raised objections last September to a Harvard professor's claim that she had unearthed an ancient papyrus in which Jesus is quoted as referring to 'my wife'. See the stories posted on this thread on Page 345 - http://benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8527207&p=345
At which time it was easy to accept their objections because the Harvard prof publicly spoke about her hypothesis before she even tried to authenticate the papyrus in question! Now, that's hardly a scholarly attitude, is it, when you are advancing a hypothesis that contradicts 2000 years of Christian belief! Now comes another scholar who shows how and why the papyrus is obviously and grossly fake. (Actually, Prof. Watson of the University of Durham, cited in the Page 345 postings, offered a more impressive dismissal of the King fragment than this one). I am not aware that Prof. King has responded to the objections but it is surprising that Harvard insists on publishing her thesis despite the failure to authenticate the document. Or maybe they trust they will get authentication by the time they release the issue in January...)

How to fake an apocryphal Gospel
by Giorgio Bernardelli
Translated from

November 12, 2012

MILAN - Remember the so-called "Gospel of Jesus's Wife"? Two months ago, Prof. Karen King of Harvard Divinity School created a major media stir by reporting her discovery of a small papyrus fragment from the fourth century written in Coptic containing the words 'my wife' from a direct quote attributed to Jesus. [How anyone could dare call a postage-stamp fragment containing less than a dozen partial lines a 'gospel' of anything is outrageous to begin with. But the media has taken to calling any supposed ancient post-Christ writing referring to Jesus as the 'gospel of...' whoever or whatever, as in the infamous 'Gospel of Judas' from few years back. The rest of us should simply refrain from following their lead!]

Her hypothesis, written up in an article that will be published in January by the theological magazine of Harvard, is that the fragment comes from a new apocryphal 'gospel' that tends to prove that Jesus's celibacy was already a subject of controversy in the early Christian communities.

Almost immediately, the authenticity of the papyrus fragment was questioned by some scholars who pointed out a series of 'oddities' about it.

But now Andrew Bernhard, an Oxford-trained scholar of ancient gospels, goes even farther to say that this was a 'fabricated fake'.

He agrees with those who have said that the partial lines represent a gross repetition of some phrases from the earlier 'Gospel of Thomas', an apocryphal Gospel in Copt which was found in 1945 among papyri found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. He points a number of suspicious typographical coincidences with an interlinear English translation of the Thomas text by Michael Grondin and which can easily be consulted online.

In an article entitled "Notes on the counterfeiting of the 'Gospel on Jesus;s wife'", he explains that the words found in King's fragment are all found in the Thomas gospel. With the exception of one: the Coptic term which means, precisely, 'my wife', that is attributed to Jesus.

Moreover, the words lifted from the Thomas text appear in exactly the same order on the fragment. Bernhard says every line found on the King fragment - Coptic words found on the same page in Grondin's English translation of the Thomas text.

He says that to compose the counterfeit lines did not even require much effort - that once the term 'my wife' was introduced to fake the fragment, all it took was to lift some phrases from the Thomas text. change gender references from masculine to feminine, and some statements from negative to affirmative, to come up with a 'historically revolutionary' document. He points out that the phrases lifted from the text also included a typographical error exactly as it is int eh Grondin translation.

As for the Coptic word which translates to 'my wife', Bernhard points out that it consists of six letters that are easily jumbled to produce new words. By coincidence he says, this word is found exactly in the center of the fragment, as though to make sure that it would not be missed!



A new book shows how the sisters of
St. Therese of Lisieux 'manipulated'
her writings to present a simplistic image
that deceived as many as four Popes
It does not reflect badly on the youngest Doctor of the Church'
but the manipulation helped shape her popular image
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the English service of

November 12, 2012

Popular devotion to St. Therese of Lisieux sees her as a 'child saint' in the sense of the 'childlike spirit' in the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus tells his disciples, "Unless you become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven".

Yet Thérèse Françoise Marie Martin, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, who died at age 24 in the Carmelite monastery of Lisieux in September 1897, and who was canonized by Pius XI in 1925, never once used the expression 'childlike spirit' in her writings, and although she cited texts from Scriptures thousands of times, she never once cited that passage from Matthew.

A new book entitled Teresa di Lisieux, il fascino della santità. I segreti di una 'dottrina' ritrovata )Therese of Lisieux, the fascination of holiness: Secrets of a recovered 'doctrine') (Lindau, 616 pp, issued today in Italy), by Gianni Gennari, who is a profound connoisseur of the saint,and who includes his direct and scrupulous translation of the saint's Manuscripts, which entered history with the name given to it by her older sisters, "The Story of a Soul".

It emerges clearly from Gennari's investigation that the doctrine of the childlike spirit attributed to Therese was always that of her family - her parents (now the Blesseds Louis and Zelie Martin). but especially of her sisters. who were disciples and spiritual children of the Jesuit priest Almire Pichon, who was never a spiritual director or confessor of Therese. Her sisters saw in Therese the perfect embodiment of the spirituality presented to them by Pichon, as Therese had written many times, explicitly, that her only spiritual director was Jesus, only Jesus.

This, Gennari writes, for 50 years, her sisters "led everyone, including Popes, to see in Therese the perfect realization of their spiritual director's teaching on the childlike spirit. And they did so, not just in promoting the devotion to her, and in presenting her writings (which they often modified for their purpose) but even in their testimonies during the canonization processes and in their correspondence with the Holy See for the preparation of speeches on Therese by Benedict XV and Pius XI, which were based on letters from her sister Celine sent for this purpose to the Vatican.

Gennari cites a letter from Pauline that has till now been ignored despite its fundamental significance. The saint's oldest sister, whom she considered her 'little mother' and who was later her prioress at the Carmelite convent, wrote ten days before Therese entered the convent that she must certainly be 'a saint. but a LITTLE saint", with the adjective written all caps in her letter. It was, and it remains the one path, but a false one, that everyone depended on in subsequent decades to interpret all the writings of Therese, also suppressing, though doing so in good faith, some texts which are among the most potentially significant.

Gianni Gennari was able to get to personally know the first true protagonist of this historical twist, Fr. Andre Combes, a scholar on spirituality, and subsequently professor at the Sorbonne and at the Lateran University, who went to Lisieux in 1946 to study the writings of Therese, and was personally welcomed by another of the saint's sisters, Mother Agnes, to be a chaplain of the Carmelite monastery.

In four years of intense study, Combes discovered the apparent manipulation of the saint's manuscripts and requested that the published texts be edited in order to restore to scholars and the faithful alike what Therese really wrote.

But when he proposed the publication of the Manuscripts in their integrity, in which he found as many as 7,000 interventions and 'corrections' made by Mother Agnes herself, he was expelled from the convent and from Lisieux as a result of an 'apostolic visitation'.

And even Mother Agnes herself, who had perhaps begun to understand Combes's motivation, was also deposed. although she had been nominated prioress for life by Pius XI. But the prioress who succeeded her, upon the arrival of a new apostolic 'visitator' who asked to see all of Therese's original writings, ordered the burning of the 'petit carnet' (the little notebook) which was the oldest known text of what had been published as Novissimas Verba, because it did not contain any references to her 'little way' and therefore, nothing of her supposed doctrine on 'spiritual childhood'. The changes had been introduced to Therese's text around 1910, 13 years after she died.

Thus, it was such manipulation that produced a public image of Therese that did not fully correspond to reality, and one might perhaps understand why Pius XI, who loved Therese and had canonized her, severely rejected a suggestion to name Therese a Doctor of the Church -a position that was adopted and reinforced by his successor Pius XII.

After Combes was expelled from Lisieux, the reasons for his request towards the publication of the saint's authentic texts have been gradually understood, and since 1996, an effort began to recover, if still possible, Therese's original writings.

It has been a long effort but from it has emerged the lines of the saint's authentic teaching as something original and fresh. Combes, along with other great theologians like Von Balthasar and Laurentin, have shown the true face of Therese, and thus in 1997. John Paul II decided to proclaim her a Doctor of the Church (the third female to be given this honor, after Teresa of Avila and Caterina of Siena).

One might say that the recovery of Therese's true teaching was completed in a catechesis by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011 who describer her authentic doctrine and called her "a guide above all to theologians".

It was that catechesis which led Gennari to revisit the entire history and to publish the book which he dedicates to Benedict XVI and the late Fr. Combes.



The true teachings of St. Therese emerge From the copious documentation in Gennari's book. Her idea of the 'childlike spirit' is not the minimalist reduction based on the faith of children generically - her only model was "the Child of God, Jesus whose grace 'divinizes' the human creature through the invasion of the Spirit, transforming man by grace into Christ himself, as Therese explicitly wrote in a letter to her sister Celine: "We are called to become divine ourselves".

And it follows that to love God and to love one's neighbor become one and the same, modelled after the love that is God himself, through the flame of his Spirit which transforms man and makes him one with God through grace.

The texts also demonstrate the saint's singular closeness as the 'universal sister' to all who suffer, to sinners, to the marginalized, to non-believers, to those who despair to the point of suicide, as well as her missionary passion which knows no limits.

If she hadn't died so young, she wrote about her desire to go to a Carmelite convent in Hanoi (Vietnam was a French colony at the time) as a missionary.

Her writings also show her profound interest in the life and holiness of priests, including those who have been alienated from the Church.

Gennari's book thus constitutes a complete 'summa' for those who wish to know the saint better. Besides her original texts, it includes a complete documentation of the strange history of her writings, and all the speeches that the Popes have given about her, including the subsequent 'course corrections' made by the later Popes, as well as a brief biography of Mons. Combes, who died in 1969.

Lastly, in a brief but significant post-script, Gennari recounts his first encounter with the writings of Therese, when he was a young man who woke up after eight months in deep coma. For Gennari, finding her teachings in their recovered authenticity, they are "even more necessary in the third mIllennium... (and) appear like God's providential response to the fog created by the masters of suspicion" who were her contempraries (Feuerbach, Mrx, Nietsche, and above all, Freud".

Therese's teachings, he says, bear witness that "the humanism of Christian revelation is the polar opposite of man's humiliation and announces the offering to human freedom of divinization and transformation to an eternity that that we already start to live during the time that we have the gift of life on earth".


Gianni Gennari makessome of his points clearer in this interview published in Avvenire, the newspaper for which he has written a regular column for years. Gennari is a theologian who obtained a dispensation from John Paul II and the CDF in the 1990s to be laicized so he could get married...

Therese of Lisieux,
master of theology,
Doctor of the Church
Interview with Gianni Gennari
Translated from


A 'revolution' about one of the best-known of saints. Her religious name, Therese of the Child Jesus, had made her 'little way' a spiritual practice for her devotees. But Therese of Lisiuex was a great teacher of doctrine, not just a model of spirituality.

This is attested in a historiographic and philological study by Gianni Gennari, who writes the column 'Lupus in pagina' for this newspaper, and who studied theology in Rome, Paris and Freiburg. His book on St. Therese is coming out soon from Lindau. and includes his translation of the original text of Manuscripts, the notebooks that were the basis for the saint's famous Autobiography of a Soul/

So Therese is no longer the saint of childlike simplicity, but of man's divinization. Is this a genuine theological revision?
The life of Therese, which has usually been described as 'small', is indeed inspired by a child, but she meant the Son of God - her model was Jesus, child of God, he who offers himself to man, invading him with his infinite love and 'divinizing' him by grace.

Therese writes of being 'appropriated' by the Divine Fire, the Holy Spirit which 'burns in the heart of the Church' and possesses her to transform her into Himself: "In the heart of my mother, the Church, I will be Love, and thus I will be all".

For John Paul II and Benedict XVI, this was Therese's singular characteristic: being so open to the invasion of God as to be able to love him with his own love, even in the dark night of the soul - Therese the sister to all sinners, the marginalized, the atheists, the desperate.

This is an ecclesial doctrine, that is in no way clerical, in which the Church is seen as the Mystical Body of Christ, anticipating by 55 years Pius XII's encyclical Mystici Corporis. Her Mariology seess Mary as "more a mother than a Queen". She also has a liberating view of the profound essence of prayer.

The story about Therese's Manuscripts manipulated by her sisters seems like a Dan Brown script. Why was everything muddled?
Her sisters always saw her as their 'little one', guided by them, but her only 'director' was Jesus himself. Fifty years after Therese died, the first to realize something was not right was Abbe Andre Combes, who was a theologian at Paris's Catholic Institute, and who later taught at the Sorbonne and the Lateran Unviersity in Rome. He spent four years in Lisieux (1946-1950) to study the life of the saint.

He discovered the manipulation of her writings that had been carried out by her sisters in good faith, but which brought to everyone the image of Therese as the saint of childlike simplicity like the children cited by Jesus in the Gospel. But the saint's model was the Child Jesus himself, the Son of God.

In fact, Therese never wrote about this 'spiritual childlikeness' , and among the thousands of Biblical citations she makes, she never once mentions the famous passage from Matthew (18,3). To hide this fact - which is today well demonstrated and accepted - true historiographic crimes were committed in good faith, which nonetheless falsified Therese's theological thinking. Combes was ablde to recover this, and it was accepted by John Paul II who declared her a Doctor of the Church, rejecting the strong NO to such a step expressed in 1932 by Pius XI and the man who would succeed him, Pius XII.

Today, the new 'way of St. Therese' consists of a non-professorial theology that is sustained by her view of the action of the Holy Spirit on the Church.

So your new book is a sort of truth-finding oepration?
Since 1956, the year when Fr. Combes was able to 'recover' the saint's actual writings - for which he was expelled in 1950 from the Carmelite convent in Lisieux - the truth has largely imposed itself, even if some resistances remain, as I document in my book, which resulted in hiding some documents and facts about the psst.

That is why my book has a double purpose: to tell the story of the complex fate of Therese's writings, as well as to lay out the spiritual and theological doctrine of this Patron of Missions and 'Doctor of Love' as John Paul II called her and 'master of theology', as Benedict XVI called in his catechesis on April 6, 2011. That had given me the dscisive push to take up the argument about her teachings that had been vital to me for more than 50 years, as I explain in my Post-Script.

You write that Therese seemd to be the providential response to the 'masters of suspicion' like Marxk, Nietszhe and Freud. Why and how?
Yes, she was that, but much more. Therese taught that the grandeur of God is offered totally to his creatures who can let themselves be divinized by his grace. The saying, "Everything is grace', used by Georges Bernanos in his Diary of a Country Priest, really came from Therese.

Man, who is God's creature, becomes a child of God by the invasion of the Holy Spirit: Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote that Therese's teaching is genuine pneumatology [study of the Holy Spirit].

Man, who can allow himself to be divinized by the invasion of the Spirit, is anything but 'alienated' (as Fuerbach and Marx maintained), anything but the rival of a Father who castrates man and denies him fappiness and love (as in Freud), anything but the Superman who proclaims the death of God (as in Nietszche).
Christology and anthropology go hand in hand - in which Therese anticipated the modern trend by a century. Some texts of Vatican II, fo Paul VI and of Benedict XVI (check out No. 10 in Caritas in veritate) were inspired by Therese, sister to sinners, the desperate ones adn atheists in search of truth, for whom she offers her final sufferings on earth.

But It is a fact that the last two Popes have re-evaluated Therese from the theological perspective...
Yes, they have exalted her as Doctor of the Church and master of theologians, precisely because her original writings have been recovered, and because these have contradicted the tradition that for so many years had produced the misunderstandings about her childlike simplicity based on psychological and sentimental factors deduced from minor things about her life.

This revaluation and the restitution to her of those gifts of light and grace that the Lord had blessed her with, and which she accepted without reservations - that is Christian holiness.

Friday, November 16, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time

ST. MARGARET OF SCOTLAND (b Hungary 1050, d Scotland 1093)
Queen of Scots, Wife and Mother
A niece of Edward the Confessor, granddaughter of King Edmund Ironside of England, great-niece of Saint Stephen of Hungary, she spent much of her youth in the British Isles. While fleeing the invading army of William the Conqueror in 1066, her family’s ship was wrecked on the Scottish coast. They were assisted by King Malcolm III Canmore of Scotland, whom Margaret married in 1070. They had six sons and two daughters, one of whom was the future Saint Maud (Matilda), wife of Henry I. While maintaining her personal holiness with rigorous private devotions, she was an exemplar of the 'just ruler'. Promoting arts and education among her people and practising legendary charity, she founded religious abbeys and sought to reform religious abuses by priests and lay people. Her husband and eldest son were killed in battle against the English in 1093. She died three days after getting the news. Three of her sons became Kings of Scotland, and one became an abbot. She was canonized in 1250.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111612.cfm

I must apologize - I mistakenly posted St. Margaret yesterday for Nov. 15, when it should have been St. Albert the Great. I have corrected the mistake.


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

- H.E. Alassane Ouattara, President of the Republic of the Ivory Coast, with his wife and delegation

- 12 Bishops of France, led by the Archbishop of Paris, on ad-limina visit

In the afternoon, he meets with

- Mons. Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (weekly meeting).


The Press Office released the text of Benedict XVI's message for World Youth Day 2013 to be held
in Rio de Janeiro next July, an event he will attend (it will be the fourth WYD in his Pontificate).



Reminders:

- Saturday, Nov. 24, 11:00 a.m.
Ordinary Public Consistory
for the Creation of 6 New Cardinals
St. Peter's Basilica

- Sunday, Nov. 25, 9"30 a.m.
Solemnity of Christ the King
Mass at St. Peter's Basilica
concelebrated with the new cardinals




- If you had any illusions where the FSSPX stand today, read the very hard line stated at length and ramblingly
by Superior-General Mons. Bernard Fellay in a recent sermon - where he says 'we are back where we were in 1975' =
in a rough translation on the blogsite Rorate caeli.
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2012/11/sspx-rome-fellay-says-we-are-back-to.html
They will not budge about rejecting all of Vatican-II, and will not recognize the validity of the Novus Ordo.


Friday today - I will be out for the rest of the day.

Please pray for our country. Many of us, not necesseraly catholics, will take part to a walking protest against same sex unions.

The government wants to legalisze these unions.

To morrow at three p.m. all over the country beginning with Paris, Lyon and so on...



Dear Flo...

All supporters of traditonal marriage feel for you in France as we do about all the other places in the West that hace chosen to overthrow it... I have been remiss in posting reports on the battle taking place in Franc - I apologize and I will make up for it... Meanwhile, we pray...

TERESA

---

Dear young friends,

I greet all of you with great joy and affection. I am sure that many of you returned from World Youth Day in Madrid all the more “planted and built up in Jesus Christ, firm in the faith” (cf. Col 2,7).

This year in our Dioceses we celebrated the joy of being Christians, taking as our theme: “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil 4,4). And now we are preparing for the next World Youth Day, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in July 2013.

Before all else, I invite you once more to take part in this important event. The celebrated statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking that beautiful Brazilian city will be an eloquent symbol for us.

Christ’s open arms are a sign of his willingness to embrace all those who come to him, and his heart represents his immense love for everyone and for each of you. Let yourselves be drawn to Christ! Experience this encounter along with all the other young people who will converge on Rio for the next World Youth Day! Accept Christ’s love and you will be the witnesses so needed by our world.

I invite you to prepare for World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro by meditating even now on the theme of the meeting: “Go and make disciples of all nations!” (cf. Mt 28,19). This is the great missionary mandate that Christ gave the whole Church, and today, two thousand years later, it remains as urgent as ever. This mandate should resound powerfully in your hearts.

The year of preparation for the gathering in Rio coincides with the Year of Faith, which began with the Synod of Bishops devoted to “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith”. I am happy that you too, dear young people, are involved in this missionary outreach on the part of the whole Church. To make Christ known is the most precious gift that you can give to others.

1. A pressing call

History shows how many young people, by their generous gift of self, made a great contribution to the Kingdom of God and the development of this world by proclaiming the Gospel. Filled with enthusiasm, they brought the Good News of God’s Love made manifest in Christ; they used the means and possibilities then available, which were far inferior to those we have today.

One example which comes to mind is Blessed José de Anchieta. He was a young Spanish Jesuit of the sixteenth century who went as a missionary to Brazil before he was twenty years old and became a great apostle of the New World. But I also think of those among yourselves who are generously devoted to the Church’s mission. I saw a wonderful testimony of this at World Youth Day in Madrid, particularly at the meeting with volunteers.

Many young people today seriously question whether life is something good, and have a hard time finding their way. More generally, however, young people look at the difficulties of our world and ask themselves: Is there anything I can do?

The light of faith illumines this darkness. It helps us to understand that every human life is priceless because each of us is the fruit of God’s love. God loves everyone, even those who have fallen away from him or disregard him. God waits patiently. Indeed, God gave his Son to die and rise again in order to free us radically from evil. Christ sent his disciples forth to bring this joyful message of salvation and new life to all people everywhere.

The Church, in continuing this mission of evangelization, is also counting on you. Dear young people, you are the first missionaries among your contemporaries! At the end of the Second Vatican Council – whose fiftieth anniversary we are celebrating this year – the Servant of God, Paul VI, consigned a message to the youth of the world.

It began: “It is to you, young men and women of the world, that the Council wishes to address its final message. For it is you who are to receive the torch from the hands of your elders and to live in the world at the period of the most massive transformations ever realized in its history. It is you who, taking up the best of the example and the teaching of your parents and your teachers, will shape the society of tomorrow. You will either be saved or perish with it”. It concluded with the words: “Build with enthusiasm a better world than what we have today!” (Message to Young People, 8 December 1965).

Dear friends, this invitation remains timely. We are passing through a very particular period of history. Technical advances have given us unprecedented possibilities for interaction between people and nations. But the globalization of these relationships will be positive and help the world to grow in humanity only if it is founded on love rather than on materialism.

Love is the only thing that can fill hearts and bring people together. God is love. When we forget God, we lose hope and become unable to love others. That is why it is so necessary to testify to God’s presence so that others can experience it. The salvation of humanity depends on this, as well as the salvation of each of us. Anyone who understands this can only exclaim with Saint Paul: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).

2. Become Christ’s disciples

This missionary vocation comes to you for another reason as well, and that is because it is necessary for our personal journey in faith. Blessed John Paul II wrote that “faith is strengthened when it is given to others!” (Redemptoris Missio, 2).

When you proclaim the Gospel, you yourselves grow as you become more deeply rooted in Christ and mature as Christians. Missionary commitment is an essential dimension of faith. We cannot be true believers if we do not evangelize. The proclamation of the Gospel can only be the result of the joy that comes from meeting Christ and finding in him the rock on which our lives can be built.

When you work to help others and proclaim the Gospel to them, then your own lives, so often fragmented because of your many activities, will find their unity in the Lord. You will also build up your own selves, and you will grow and mature in humanity.

What does it mean to be a missionary? Above all, it means being a disciple of Christ. It means listening ever anew to the invitation to follow him and look to him: “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart” (Mt 11,29). A disciple is a person attentive to Jesus’s word (cf. Lk 10,39), someone who acknowledges that Jesus is the Teacher who has loved us so much that he gave his life for us. Each one of you, therefore, should let yourself be shaped by God’s word every day. This will make you friends of the Lord Jesus and enable you to lead other young people to friendship with him.

I encourage you to think of the gifts you have received from God so that you can pass them on to others in turn. Learn to reread your personal history. Be conscious of the wonderful legacy passed down to you from previous generations. So many faith-filled people have been courageous in handing down the faith in the face of trials and incomprehension.

Let us never forget that we are links in a great chain of men and women who have transmitted the truth of the faith and who depend on us to pass it on to others. Being a missionary presupposes knowledge of this legacy, which is the faith of the Church. It is necessary to know what you believe in, so that you can proclaim it.

As I wrote in the introduction to YouCat, the catechism for young people that I gave you at World Youth Day in Madrid, “you need to know your faith with that same precision with which an IT specialist knows the inner workings of a computer. You need to understand it like a good musician knows the piece he is playing. Yes, you need to be more deeply rooted in the faith than the generation of your parents so that you can engage the challenges and temptations of this time with strength and determination” (Foreword).

3. Go forth!

Jesus sent his disciples forth on mission with this command: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mk 16:15-16).

To evangelize means to bring the Good News of salvation to others and to let them know that this Good News is a person: Jesus Christ. When I meet him, when I discover how much I am loved by God and saved by God, I begin to feel not only the desire, but also the need to make God known to others. At the beginning of John’s Gospel we see how Andrew, immediately after he met Jesus, ran off to fetch his brother Simon (cf. 1:40-42).

Evangelization always begins with an encounter with the Lord Jesus. Those who come to Jesus and have experienced his love, immediately want to share the beauty of the meeting and the joy born of his friendship. The more we know Christ, the more we want to talk about him. The more we speak with Christ, the more we want to speak about him. The more we are won over by Christ, the more we want to draw others to him.

Through Baptism, which brings us to new life, the Holy Spirit abides in us and inflames our minds and hearts. The Spirit shows us how to know God and to enter into ever deeper friendship with Christ. It is the Spirit who encourages us to do good, to serve others and to give of ourselves.

Through Confirmation we are strengthened by the gifts of the Spirit so that we can bear witness to the Gospel in an increasingly mature way. It is the Spirit of love, therefore, who is the driving force behind our mission. The Spirit impels us to go out from ourselves and to “go forth” to evangelize.

Dear young people, allow yourselves to be led on by the power of God’s love. Let that love overcome the tendency to remain enclosed in your own world with your own problems and your own habits. Have the courage to “go out” from yourselves in order to “go forth” towards others and to show them the way to an encounter with God.

4. Gather all nations

The risen Christ sent his disciples forth to bear witness to his saving presence before all the nations, because God in his superabundant love wants everyone to be saved and no one to be lost. By his loving sacrifice on the cross, Jesus opened up the way for every man and woman to come to know God and enter into a communion of love with him. He formed a community of disciples to bring the saving message of the Gospel to the ends of the earth and to reach men and women in every time and place. Let us make God’s desire our own!

Dear friends, open your eyes and look around you. So many young people no longer see any meaning in their lives.

Go forth! Christ needs you too. Let yourselves be caught up and drawn along by his love. Be at the service of this immense love, so it can reach out to everyone, especially to those “far away”.

Some people are far away geographically, but others are far away because their way of life has no place for God. Some people have not yet personally received the Gospel, while others have been given it, but live as if God did not exist.

Let us open our hearts to everyone. Let us enter into conversation in simplicity and respect. If this conversation is held in true friendship, it will bear fruit. The “nations” that we are invited to reach out to are not only other countries in the world. They are also the different areas of our lives, such as our families, communities, places of study and work, groups of friends and places where we spend our free time. The joyful proclamation of the Gospel is meant for all the areas of our lives, without exception.

I would like to emphasize two areas where your missionary commitment is all the more necessary. Dear young people, the first is the field of social communications, particularly the world of the internet. As I mentioned to you on another occasion: “I ask you to introduce into the culture of this new environment of communications and information technology the values on which you have built your lives. [...] It falls, in particular, to young people, who have an almost spontaneous affinity for the new means of communication, to take on the responsibility for the evangelization of this ‘digital continent’” (Message for the 43rd World Communications Day, 24 May 2009).

Learn how to use these media wisely. Be aware of the hidden dangers they contain, especially the risk of addiction, of confusing the real world with the virtual, and of replacing direct and personal encounters and dialogue with internet contacts.

The second area is that of travel and migration. Nowadays more and more young people travel, sometimes for their studies or work, and at other times for pleasure. I am also thinking of the movements of migration which involve millions of people, very often young, who go to other regions or countries for financial or social reasons. Here too we can find providential opportunities for sharing the Gospel.

Dear young people, do not be afraid to witness to your faith in these settings. It is a precious gift for those you meet when you communicate the joy of an encounter with Christ.

5. Make disciples!

I imagine that you have at times found it difficult to invite your contemporaries to an experience of faith. You have seen how many young people, especially at certain points in their life journey, desire to know Christ and to live the values of the Gospel, but also feel inadequate and incapable. What can we do?

First, your closeness and your witness will themselves be a way in which God can touch their hearts. Proclaiming Christ is not only a matter of words, but something which involves one’s whole life and translates into signs of love. It is the love that Christ has poured into our hearts which makes us evangelizers. Consequently, our love must become more and more like Christ’s own love.

We should always be prepared, like the Good Samaritan, to be attentive to those we meet, to listen, to be understanding and to help. In this way we can lead those who are searching for the truth and for meaning in life to God’s house, the Church, where hope and salvation abide (cf. Lk 10:29-37).

Dear friends, never forget that the first act of love that you can do for others is to share the source of our hope. If we do not give them God, we give them too little! Jesus commanded his Apostles: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Mt 28:19-20).

The main way that we have to “make disciples” is through Baptism and catechesis. This means leading the people we are evangelizing to encounter the living Christ above all in his word and in the sacraments. In this way they can believe in him, they can come to know God and to live in his grace.

I would like each of you to ask yourself: Have I ever had the courage to propose Baptism to young people who have not received it? Have I ever invited anyone to embark on a journey of discovery of the Christian faith?

Dear friends, do not be afraid to suggest an encounter with Christ to people of your own age. Ask the Holy Spirit for help. The Spirit will show you the way to know and love Christ even more fully, and to be creative in spreading the Gospel.

6. Firm in the faith

When faced with difficulties in the mission of evangelizing, perhaps you will be tempted to say, like the prophet Jeremiah: “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth”. But God will say to you too: “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you you shall go” (Jer 1,6-7).

Whenever you feel inadequate, incapable and weak in proclaiming and witnessing to the faith, do not be afraid. Evangelization is not our initiative, and it does not depend on our talents. It is a faithful and obedient response to God’s call and so it is not based on our power but on God’s. Saint Paul knew this from experience: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4,7).

For this reason, I encourage you to make prayer and the sacraments your foundation. Authentic evangelization is born of prayer and sustained by prayer. We must first speak with God in order to be able to speak about God.

In prayer, we entrust to the Lord the people to whom we have been sent, asking him to touch their hearts. We ask the Holy Spirit to make us his instruments for their salvation. We ask Christ to put his words on our lips and to make us signs of his love.

In a more general way, we pray for the mission of the whole Church, as Jesus explicitly asked us: “Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest” (Mt 9,38).

Find in the Eucharist the wellspring of your life of faith and Christian witness, regularly attending Mass each Sunday and whenever you can during the week.

Approach the sacrament of Reconciliation frequently. It is a very special encounter with God’s mercy in which he welcomes us, forgives us and renews our hearts in charity.

Make an effort to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation if you have not already done so, and prepare yourselves for it with care and commitment. Confirmation is, like the Eucharist, a sacrament of mission, for it gives us the strength and love of the Holy Spirit to profess fearlessly our faith.

I also encourage you to practise Eucharistic adoration. Time spent in listening and talking with Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament becomes a source of new missionary enthusiasm.

If you follow this path, Christ himself will give you the ability to be completely faithful to his word and to bear faithful and courageous witness to him.

At times you will be called to give proof of your perseverance, particularly when the word of God is met with rejection or opposition. In certain areas of the world, some of you suffer from the fact that you cannot bear public witness to your faith in Christ due to the lack of religious freedom. Some have already paid with their lives the price of belonging to the Church.

I ask you to remain firm in the faith, confident that Christ is at your side in every trial. To you too he says: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Mt 5,11-12).

7. With the whole Church

Dear young people, if you are to remain firm in professing the Christian faith wherever you are sent, you need the Church. No one can bear witness to the Gospel alone. Jesus sent forth his disciples on mission together. He spoke to them in the plural when he said: “Make disciples”.

Our witness is always given as members of the Christian community, and our mission is made fruitful by the communion lived in the Church. It is by our unity and love for one another that others will recognize us as Christ’s disciples (cf. Jn 13,5).

I thank God for the wonderful work of evangelization being carried out by our Christian communities, our parishes and our ecclesial movements. The fruits of this evangelization belong to the whole Church. As Jesus said: “One sows and another reaps” (Jn 4,37).

Here I cannot fail to express my gratitude for the great gift of missionaries, who devote themselves completely to proclaiming the Gospel to the ends of the earth. I also thank the Lord for priests and consecrated persons, who give themselves totally so that Jesus Christ will be proclaimed and loved.

Here I would like to encourage young people who are called by God to commit themselves with enthusiasm to these vocations: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20,35). To those who leave everything to follow him, Jesus promised a hundredfold as much and eternal life besides (cf. Mt 19,29).

I also give thanks for all those lay men and women who do their best to live their daily lives as mission wherever they find themselves, at home or at work, so that Christ will be loved and served and that the Kingdom of God will grow. I think especially of all those who work in the fields of education, health care, business, politics and finance, and in the many other areas of the lay apostolate.

Christ needs your commitment and your witness. Let nothing – whether difficulties or lack of understanding – discourage you from bringing the Gospel of Christ wherever you find yourselves. Each of you is a precious piece in the great mosaic of evangelization!

8. “Here I am, Lord!”

Finally, dear young people, I would ask all of you to hear, in the depths of your heart, Jesus’s call to proclaim his Gospel. As the great statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro shows, his heart is open with love for each and every person, and his arms are open wide to reach out to everyone.

Be yourselves the heart and arms of Jesus! Go forth and bear witness to his love! Be a new generation of missionaries, impelled by love and openness to all! Follow the example of the Church’s great missionaries like Saint Francis Xavier and so many others.

At the conclusion of World Youth Day in Madrid, I blessed a number of young people from the different continents who were going forth on mission. They represented all those young people who, echoing the words of the prophet Isaiah, have said to the Lord: “Here I am. Send me!” (Is 6,8). The Church has confidence in you and she thanks you for the joy and energy that you contribute.

Generously put your talents to use in the service of the proclamation of the Gospel! We know that the Holy Spirit is granted to those who open their hearts to this proclamation. And do not be afraid: Jesus, the Saviour of the world, is with us every day until the end of time (cf. Mt 28,20).

This call, which I make to the youth of the whole world, has a particular resonance for you, dear young people of Latin America! During the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American Bishops, in Aparecida in 2007, the Bishops launched a “continental mission”. Young people form a majority of the population in South America and they are an important and precious resource for the Church and society.

Be in the first line of missionaries! Now that World Youth Day is coming back to Latin America, I ask you, the young people on the continent, to transmit the enthusiasm of your faith to your contemporaries from all over the world!

May Our Lady, Star of the New Evangelization, whom we also invoke under the titles of Our Lady of Aparecida and Our Lady of Guadalupe, accompany each of you in your mission as a witness to God’s love. To all of you, with particular affection, I impart my Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican
18 October 2012

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Saturday, Nov. 17, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Hungary/Thuringia

ST. ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY (Also known as Elizabeth of Thuringia) (b Hungary 1207, d. Germany 1231)
Princess of Hungary, Queen of Thuringia, Mother and Widow, Lay Franciscan
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on Oct. 20, 2011 to the saint
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101020...
who has been described as "one of the most pious women to ever live... who made more of an impact on an entire country then most people who live three times as long as she did". Married to Ludwig of Thuringia at 14, he allowed her to use royal resources for her charities and is locally venerated as a saint himself even if he was never canonized. Their third child was born after Ludwig was killed as he set out for the Sixth Crusade. She was devastated by his death and joined the Franciscan third order. Venerated for her life of prayer, sacrifice and service, she was canonized just four years after she died. When Benedict XVI visited Erfurt, capital of Thuringia, during his 2011 trip to Germany, the Mass he celebrated was said in honor of St. Elizabeth.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111712.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY, 11/17/12

The Holy Father met with

- Bishops of France on ad-limina visit (Group 2). Address in French.

- Partipants in the international meeting held under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for Ministering
to Health Care Workers. Address in Italian.

Very sorry for the very late start on my Saturday postings (it's already Sunday even in New York...

The Pope's address
to visiting French bishops
Translated from

November 17, 2012

At 11 a.m. Saturday, at the Consistory Hall of the Apostolic Palac,e the Holy Father Benedict XVI met with the prelates of the French bishops' conference (2nd group - representing the ecclesiastical provinces of Lille, Reims, Paris, Besançon and Dijon; the dioceses of Strasbourg and Metz; the Military Ordinariate and the Ordinariate of Oriental Catholics living in France) whom he received earlier in the week in separate audiences on their visit ad limina Apostolorum. The following is the text of the Pope's address to them:

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Dear Cardinal
and dear Brothers in the Episcopate:

I thank you, Eminence, for your words. I too keep a vivid memory of my visit to France in 2088 which allowed intense moments of faith and a meeting with the world of culture.

In my message to your assembly in Lourdes last March, I recalled that "The Second Vatican Council was and remains an authentic sign of God for our time". It is particularly true in the area of dialog between the Church and the world, this world with which she lives and within which she acts]/G] (cf. Gaudium et spes, n. 40, §1),, and upon which she wishes to spread the light that radiates from divine life (idem, §2).

As you know, the more the Church is ware of her being and her mission, the more she is able to love this world, to bring upon it a trusting look, inspired by that of Jesus, without yielding to the temptation of discouragement or withdrawal. And "the Church, in fulfilling herown mission, already takes part in the work of civilization and pushes it" (ibid, No. 59,4), the Council says.

Your nation is rich with a long Christian history which cannot be ignored nor diminished, and which bears eloquent witness to this truth which still configures her singular calling today. Not only the faithful of her dioceses, but those of the entire world, expect much, never doubt it, of the Church in France.

As pastors, we are, of course, conscious of our limitations, but trusting in the power of Christ, we also know that we must once again be the 'heralds of the faith' (Lumen gentium, n. 50), who must, along with the priests and the faithful, bear witness to the message of Christ "in such a way that all the earthly activities of the faithful may be bathed in the light of Christ" (Gaudium et spes, n. 43, § 5).

The Year of Faith allows us to grow in confidence in the intrinsic power and richness of the evangelical message. How many times have we taken note that it is the words of faith, the simple and direct words that are laden with the sap of the divine Word which best touch hearts and spirits, and bring the most decisive light?

Therefore do not be afraid of speaking with a most apostolic vigor of the mystery of man, and to tirelessly deploy the richnesses of the Christian faith. It has words and realities, fundamental beliefs and ways of reasoning, that alone can bring the hope that the world thirst for.

In all the important debates in society, the voice of the Church must make itself be heard relentlessly and with determination. She does so with respect for the French tradition regarding the distinction between the spheres of competence of the Church and that of the State.

Precisely in this context, the harmony that exists between faith and reason gives you a particular assurance: the message of Christ and his Church not only bears a religious identity which demands to be respected as such; it also carries a wisdom which correctly allows responding concretely to questions of the present that are urgent and sometimes distressing.

In continuing to exercise, as you do, the prophetic dimension of your episcopal ministry, you bring to these debates the indispensable word of truth which frees and opens hearts to hope. These words, I am convinced, are expected from you. The truth will always be welcomed favorably when it is presented with charity, not as the fruit of our own reflections, but above all, as the word that God wishes to address to every man.

In this respect, I am reminded of the meeting that I had at the College des Bernardins. France can pride itself in counting among her sons and daughters many intellectuals of a high level some of whom regard the Church with benevolence and respect. Believers or not, they are aware of tehe immense challenges of our time, in which the Christian message is an irreplaceable point of reference.

Other intellectual or philosophical traditions may run dry, but the Church finds within her divine mission the assurance and the courage to preach, opportunely or not, a universal call to salvation, the greatness of the divne plan for mankind, the responsibility of man, his dignity and his freedom - and despite the wounds of sin - his capacity to discern in his conscience what is true and good, and his openness to divine grace.

At the College des Bernardins, I wished to remind you that the monastic way, totally oriented towards the quest for God, emerged as a source of renewal and progress for culture. The religious communities, especially the monastic ones, that I know well in your country, can count on your esteem and your attentive care, respecting the charisms proper to each one.

Religious life, which exclusively serves teh work of God, to which none other can be preferred (cf. The Rule of St. Benedict), is a treasure in your dioceses. They bring a radical witness to the way in which Christian existence, precisely because it is entirely a following of Christ, fully realizes the human calling to a happy life. All of society, and not just the Church, is greatly enriched by this witness. Offered in humility, gentleness and silence, it brings, so to say, the proof that there is more to man than man himself.

As the Council recals, the liturgical action of the Church also plays a part in its contribution to the work of civilization (cf. Gaudium et spes n. 58, 4). Liturgy is, in fact, the celebration of the central event in human history, Christ's redeeming sacrifice. Through liturgy, the Church bears witness to God's love for man, she bears witness that the life of man has a meaning, and that he is called by vocation to take part in the glorious life of the Trinity.

Mankind needs this witness. It has need to perceive, through liturgical celebrations, the consciousness that the Church has of the Lordship of God and the dignity of man. She has the right to be able to discern, beyond the limitations that her riotes and ceremonies always have, that Christ "is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the person of the minister" (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 7).

Knowing the care with which you seek to surround your liturgical celebrations, I encourage you to cultivate the art of celebration, helping your priests in this way, and to work ceaselessly for the liturgical formation of seminarians and the faithful.

Respect for established norms expresses love and fidelity to the faith of the Church, to the treasure of grace that she safeguards and transmits. The beauty of liturgical celebrations, much more than innovations and subjective accommodations, constitutes a lasting and efficient means of evangelization.

Your concern is great today for the transmission of the faith to the younger generations. Numerous families in your country continue to assure this. I bless and encourage with all my heart the initiatives you are taking to support these families, for surrounding them with your concern, for favoring their taking responsibility in the educational domain.

The responsibility of parents in this field is a valuable asset, that the Church defends and promotes as much as an inalienable and capital dimension of the common good for all of society, as an exigency demanded by the dignity of the person and the family.

You also know that challenges are not lacking in this field: that it has to do with the difficulty linked to the transmission of received faith - familial as well as social - of faith that is personally taken on at the threshold of adulthood; and also of the difficulty in a break in this transmission with the succession of many generations that have been alienated from the living faith.

There is also the enormous challenge of living in a society which does not always share in the teachings of Christ, which sometimes seeks to ridicule and marginalize the Church in its desire to confine it only to the private sphere.

In order to meet these immense challenges, the Church needs credible witnesses. Christian witness rooted in Christ and lived consistently and authentically, takes many forms, without preconceived schemes. It is born and renews itself ceaselessly under the action of the Holy Spirit. To support this witness, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a very useful tool because it manifests the power and teh beauty of the faith. I encourage you to make it widely known, especially during this year when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of its publication.

In the positions you hold, you also render witness through your devotion, simplicity of life, your pastoral solicitude, and above all, by the union among yourselves and with the Successor of Peter. Aware of the power of example, you will find the words and the gestures to encourage the faithful to embody this 'unity of life'.

They must feel that their faith commits them, that is is a liberation and not a burden, that consistency in living this faith is a source of joy and fruitfulness (cf. Exhort. apost. Christifideles laici, n. 17). This is true just as much for their attachment and fidelity to the moral teaching of the Church, as, for instance, for the courage to make known their Christian convictions, without arrogance but with respect in the various circles where they move.

Those among them who are engaged in public life have a special responsibility in this regard. With the bishops, they must be attentive to projected civil laws which threaten the protection of marriage between men and women, the safeguarding of life from conception to death, and the proper orientation of bioethics in fidelity to the documents of the Magisterium.

It is more than ever necessary that many Christians take the road of service to the common good, especially in deepening the application of the Church's social doctrine.

You can count on my prayers that your efforts in this area shall bear abundant fruit. Finally, I invoke the benediction of the Lord on you, your priests and eacons, your religious and other consecrated persons working in your dioceses, and on your faithful. May God be with you always. Thank you.

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Sorry... Serial personal obligations compel me for a third day to be away and I won't be able to post anything until later tonight...

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/11/2012 15:41]