Benedict XVI visits Loreto
again on October 4
Translated from the Italian service of
September 12, 2012
The program for Benedict XVI's pastoral visit to Loreto on October 4 was presented Wednesday at the headquarters of the Marche region in Ancona.
During the visit, the Pope will entrust to Our Lady of Loreto the coming General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod on the subject of the New Evangelization, and the Year of Faith which opens Oct. 11, on the 50th anniversary of the day the Second Vatican Council began.
[It will be his second visit to Loreto as Pope, the first having been for the 2008 Agora of young Italian Catholics, during which he addressed half a million young people who attended during a prayer vigil and the concluding Mass.]
"By repeating the gesture of Blessed John XXIII
[who travelled to Loreto a few days before the Council opened]," said Archbishop Giovanni Tonucci, the pontifical delegate to Loreto
[which enjoys the status of a pontifical prelature rather than a diocese, and is therefore headed by a representative of the Pope], "Benedict XVI's pilgrimage underscores the commitment of the Church to the task of New Evangelization", as he underscored the strong theological content and historical value of the event.
"Papa Roncalli's trip to the Marche region in 1962", Mons. Tonucci said, "was the first trip outside Lazio made by a Pope since the reunification of Italy in 1860
[which led to the dissolution of the Papal States in Italy, effectively confining the Popes to the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo until after the Lateran Pacts of 1929 regularized the status of the Vatican as a sovereign state], and in doing so, he inaugurated a new season and a new style for the Successors of Peter.It is a symbolic occasion to reiterate the desire of the Church to maintain fruitful relations and full collaboration between Church and lay institutions".
The Pope is expected to arrive by helicopter from the Vatican around 10 a.m. on October 4. From the landing site, he will then travel by Popemobile to the Piazza della Madonna in front of the Basilica of the Holy House of Nazareth in Loreto, where he will celebrate Holy Mass.
He will return to Rome around 5 p.m., after a series of meetings with priests, religious and organizers of the visit.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/09/2012 16:28]