FIRST VESPERS
SOLEMNITY OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL
Illustration: 'Stand up straight on your feet' (Acts 14,10), St. Paul heals a lame man in Lystra. Fresco by Federio Zuccari, 1584, Cappella Paolina, Vatican Apostolic Palace.
At 6 p.m. Monday, June 28, the Holy Father Benedetto XVI presided at First Vespers for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul at the Baslica of St. Paul outside the Walls.
A delegation sent by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I from Constantinople took part, composed on His Eminence Gennadios (Limouris), Metropolitan of Sassima; H.E. Bartholomaios (Ioannis Kessidis), Bishop of Arianzós and assistant to the Metropolitan for Germany; and Rev. Deaccon Theodoros Meimaris, from teh patriarchal See in Phanar.
The Pope was welcomed on his arrival at the Basilica by Mons. Francesco Monterisi, Arch-Priest, and Fr. Edmund Power, abbot of the Benedictine monastery attached to the basilica.
Before the Vespers got underway, the Pope descended to the crypt under the main altar to pray at the tomb of St. Paul.
Pope announces new Pontifical Council
to re-evangelise secularized Christian nations
28 Jun 10 (RV) Pope Benedict announced the creation of a new Pontifical Council dedicated to New Evangelization on Monday evening, during the Vespers service marking the vigil of the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul.
Pope Benedict chose the main shrine of the first great Christian missionary – St. Paul – to announce a new Pontifical Council dedicated to the evangelization of secularized Christian nations.
The Pope was celebrating the Vespers of the Vigil of the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul in the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
During his homily, he spoke of how his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, had urgently proclaimed a new evangelization, aimed at countries which had long before received the Gospel.
Pope Benedict said he received this legacy upon his own election to the Chair of Peter, and noted the challenges of the present time are mostly spiritual.
He said he wanted to give the new Pontifical Council the task of promoting new evangelization in countries with deep Christian roots which are now experiencing an “eclipse of God”, becoming increasingly secularized.
He said this situation presents a challenge to find the appropriate means in which to revive the perennial truth of the Gospel of Christ in the secularized nations.
Addressing the delegation sent by the Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Holy Father said 'new evangelization' also asks Christians to urgently pursue the quest for full unity among Christians.
He said it was a sign of hope that the Churches of Rome and Constantinople have been practising reciprocal visits during the feast days of their respective patron saints.
On Tuesday morning, the Pope will preside at Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, where he will bestow the Pallium on 38 metropolitan archbishops.
Pope announces creation of
a pontifical council for new evangelization
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY, June 28 (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI announced he is establishing a pontifical council for new evangelization to find ways "to re-propose the perennial truth of the Gospel" in regions where secularism is smothering Church practice.
Leading an evening prayer service June 28 at Rome's Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Pope Benedict said there are areas of the globe that have been Christian for centuries, but where "the process of secularization has produced a serious crisis" in their people's sense of what it means to be Christian and to belong to the Church.
"I have decided to create a new organism, in the form of a pontifical council, with the principal task of promoting a renewed evangelization in the countries where the first proclamation of faith has already resounded and where there are churches of ancient foundation present, but which are living through a progressive secularization of society and a kind of 'eclipse of the sense of God,'" he said.
The challenge, he said, is to find ways to help people rediscover the value of faith.
The Pope did not say what the formal name of the pontifical council would be and he did not announce who would head it, although in the weeks leading to the announcement, Vatican commentators suggested it would be Italian Archbishop Rino Fisichella, currently president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
[He would not be expected to announce nominations of any kind during a homily!]
Pope Benedict made the announcement at the basilica built over what is believed to be the tomb of St. Paul, who dedicated "his entire existence and his hard work for the kingdom of God," the pope said.
The Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, established by Pope John Paul II in 1985, was the last pontifical council created.
The Pope's evening prayer service marked the vigil of the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, the Vatican's patron saints and the symbols of the Church's unity and its universality, he said.
Saying he wanted to focus the evening service on the universal aspect of the Church, Pope Benedict recalled how Pope John Paul II repeatedly used the phrase "new evangelization" to describe the need for a new commitment to spreading the Gospel message in countries evangelized centuries ago, and the need to find new ways to preach the Gospel that correspond both to the truth and to the needs of modern men and women.
The Pope said the social and religious challenges of the modern world cannot be met by human strength and ingenuity alone. In fact, he said, he and other Church leaders often feel like the disciples of Jesus faced with a hungry crowd but having only a few fish and a couple loaves of bread to divide among them.
"Jesus showed them that with faith in God nothing is impossible and that a few loaves of bread and fish, blessed and shared, could satisfy everyone," he said.
"But there wasn't -- and there isn't -- only hunger for material food: There is a deeper hunger, which only God can satisfy," the pope said.
Men and women today want "an authentic and full life, they need truth, profound freedom, unconditional love. Even in the deserts of the secularized world, the human soul thirsts for God," he said.
Welcoming a delegation from the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Pope said the task of new evangelization also is tied to the commitment to work for Christian unity.
"May the intercession of Sts. Peter and Paul obtain for the whole church an ardent faith and apostolic courage to announce to the world the truth we all need, the truth that is God," the Pope prayed.