BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Sunday, February 28
Second Sunday of Lent

Panel shows the African Memorial Cathedral of Dakar, Senegal.
BLESSED DANIEL BROTTIER (France, 1876-1936), Spiritan Priest, Missionary, Wartime Chaplain, Worker of Charity
Daniel was ordained a diocesan priest in 1899 and started out as a teacher, but four years later, he joined the Congregation
of the Holy Spirit (CSSp) in order to serve as a missionary in Africa. He served in Senegal for eight years but had to return
to France due to poor health. However, he started to raise funds to build a cathedral for Dakar to honor Africans who had died
for France. [In fact, the cathedral was inaugurated just four weeks before he died in 1936, but he was too sick to attend]. In
1914, he volunteered to be a chaplain on the battlefronts, where he served the wounded and the dying for 52 months. He would
attribute his survival to St. Therese of Lisieux, in whose honor he built a chapel in Auteuil, the Paris suburb where he spent
the last 10 years of his life, which he dedicated to a foundation for orphans and abandoned children which continues flourish
today. Less than 50 years after his death, Fr. Brottier was beatified by John Paul II in Paris in 1984.
Reading for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/022810.shtml


OR today.

The papal story in this issue is on the end of the Lenten exercises for the Pope and the Roman Curia
[both the Pope's closing remarks and the additional story have been translated and posted above]. The
main news is the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck off the coast of Concepcion, Chile, yesterday,
which appears to have caused at least $30 billion in material damages but far less devastation in terms
of human lives and wounded compared to Haiti (primarily because Chile has been an 'earthquake-ready'
nation since the 1960s). There is an editorial commentary on the Afghan situation - that if arms and
diplomacy fail to resolve the Taliban threat, then the future looks even more dark for Afghanistan; and
Obama calls an April summit on nuclear security. In the inside pages, an essay on the impact of Leo
XIII's social teaching, and one on a major exhibit of pre-Raphaelite paintings in Ravenna.


THE POPE'S DAY

Sunday Angelus - The Holy Father reflected on the Transfiguration of Jesus from today's Gospel.
After the prayers, he made a special appeal to Iraqi and international authorities to guarantee
safety for the Christian minority and expressed his closeness to the persecuted Christians.
He also expressed his sympathy for the Chileans who have been struck by a massive earthquake.