Unless you want to read selective accounts of the Holy Father's catechesis on Joan of Arc yesterday - picked up by the secular media because he held her out as 'a model for politicians' - or retreads of how MSM interprets the Pope's message for World Social Communications Day in 2011 as a blessing for social networking, a warning against Catholic bloggers to be more tempErate, or a reminder that the virtual world should not replace reality, then the only 'news' today about the Pope are calendar items - one looking ahead to World Youth Day in Madrid next August, the other to the first 'Court of the Gentiles' initative to get under way at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in March.
Pope to make third visit
to Spain in August
MADRID, Jan. 27 A(FP) - Pope Benedict XVI will make his third visit to Spain in August to preside over World Youth Day festivities because he believes the nation “needs a deeper evangelisation”, a Spanish Church official said yesterday.
The 83-year-old Pope railed against social reforms introduced by Spain’s socialist government such as same-sex marriage and easier access to abortion during his two previous visits.
The visit to Madrid, between August 18 and 21, will make Spain the country that he has travelled to the most since becoming Pontiff.
“I think he feels the visit will suit us very well, he feels Spain needs a deeper evangelisation,” World Youth Day director of ceremonies Javier Cremades said at a news conference when asked why the Pope was visiting Spain again.
[First of all, he committed to the WYD event in 2008, when he announced it in Sydney. Both his first two visits to Spain as Pope were similarly occasion-based: to close the Fifth World Encounter of Families in 2006, and to mark the Holy Year of St aJames in Compostela and consecrate teh Baslica of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, last November.]
The World Youth Day festival was the brainchild of the late Pope John Paul II who thought it could help revitalise faith among the world’s young Catholics.
The event features concerts and dances alongside masses and prayer meetings.
Church officials expect tens of thousands of youths from outside Spain will attend the festival.
The Pope will lead a Way of the Cross procession on August 19 through the streets of the Spanish capital involving youth from 15 nations “who will reflect the problems and difficulties faced by young people around the world,” said Mr Cremades.
He will celebrate a two-hour Mass at an airfield just outside Madrid that Catholic Church officials expect will draw some two million pilgrims on the last day of his visit.
Before leaving Spain the Pope will announce the location for the next World Youth Day festival. It was last held in Sydney, in 2008.
Pope Benedict visited Spain in 2006, a year after he was elected Pontiff, for a Church meeting on families in the eastern city of Valencia.
He returned in November 2010 for a two-day visit that included a stop in Barcelona to consecrate the Sagrada Familia basilica, the masterpiece of architect Antoni Gaudi.
The following story rehashes a ROME REPORTS article posted on page 175 of this thread last January 5 and adds a few details.
Illustrations from a scale model of the Temple found in the Jewish Museum in Jerusalem.
Vatican to launch dialogue
with non-believers in March
By Alan Holdren, Rome Correspondent
Vatican City, Jan 26, 2011 (CNA/EWTN News).- Dialogue between the Vatican, agnostics and atheists will take place in a new arena as of this spring.
The "Courtyard of the Gentiles" project,
brainchild of the Pontifical Council for Culture and its president Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, will be officially presented Mar. 24-25 in Paris, France.
][No, the 'court of the Gentiles' idea itself was BenedictXVI's, presented in his address to the Roman Curia in December 2009. Ravasi's dicastery is in charge of implementing it.]
Cardinal Ravasi first unveiled his plans for the Paris inauguration of the "Courtyard" last year, but further details were released in a statement from the council on Jan. 25.
The Vatican's culture department plans for it to be "a new permanent Vatican structure to promote dialogue and encounter between believers and non-believers."
The inauguration in Paris will involve a series of events over two days.
Presentations based on the theme “religion, enlightenment, common reason" will be delivered at the headquarters of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization, Sorbonne University and the Institut de France.
A roundtable discussion at the College des Bernardins will conclude the events on March 25. Festivities including music, plays, and a light show will follow outside the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
During the celebration, themed “Into the Courtyard of the Unknown,” the cathedral will be open for prayer and meditation.
As reported in Italy's
La Repubblica last May, Cardinal Ravasi explained that the "project" would begin with the broad base of discussing "a comprehensive vision of man."
It will not shy away from themes such as abortion, homosexuality and pedophilia, he said, but these subjects would be addressed during dialogue "in due time.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/01/2011 22:44]