BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Palm Sunday, March 24
Sunday of the Passion of our Lord
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032413.cfm

Today's saint:

ST. CATERINA DA GENOVA [Catherine of Genoa] (Italy, 1447-1510), Mystic
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on January 20, 2011 to this saint
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20110112...
Born to one of the most historic families of Genoa, Caterina wanted to be a nun at age 13 but she was too young. However, she married a fellow noble youth at age 16. her husband turned out to be unfaithful and a wastrel, so she herself turned to a life of pleasure. When she was 26, a mystic vision during confession converted her. She became an example to her husband who eventually became a lay Franciscan. But he had brought them to financial ruin, and they now dedicated themselves to charitable work at Genoa's largest hospital. When her husband died, Caterina became manager of the hospital. For 25 years, she resisted having a spiritual adviser but 12 years before her death, she found one who would later publish Caterina's memoirs of her mystic experiences. From this, a Dialog of the Soul and the Body and a Treatise on Purgatory became popular spiritual works after her death, inspiring both St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Francis de Sales. She was canonized in 1737. Benedict XVI dedicated his catecheses on 1/12/11 to her as one of the great female figures of the medieval Church.

AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father Francis presided at the procession, blessing of the palms and Eucharistic Celebration at
St. Peter's square. Homily and Angelus.




One year ago today...
The second day of Benedict XVI's apostolic visit to Mexico


The Holy Father had a rest of almost 24 hours between his arrival in Mexico and his first events the next day - an afternoon meeting with the Mexican President and a greeting to the children of Mexico from the balcony of the official residence overlooking Guanajuato's Plaza de la Paz. In the morning, he celebrated Mass at the chapel of the convent in Colegio de MIraflores, Leon, where he stayed during the visit.



He started the day by celebrating morning Mass as he usually does, with his two secretaries concelebrating, only this time with the convent nuns in attendance, and after a meeting with the Bishop of Guajuanato and others, strolled around the gardens with the two secretaries.

It was very instructive - and most fascinating - to examine the way MSM, typified by AP, pivoted on a dime in its-reporting of the Mexicans' welcome for Benedict XVI. After days of crowing - one would say gloating - that Benedict XVI would be lucky if even the proverbial four cats turned up to see him, much less to welcome him, "so overwhelming is Mexico's love and devotion for his predecessor that they have no room at all in their hearts for any other Pope", or so their storyline went.

Oh no, Benedict XVI, mere mortal, had no prayer of a chance to come anywhere near the place John Paul II, immortal hero and soon-to-be-saint, had carved for himself in the hearts of the Mexicans. Quoting, of course, only those Mexicans who did feel that way. As though they typified all Mexican Catholics... As though the reporters had never seen or heard - even if only on TV - the Mexican pilgrims who are invariably a loud and devout presence at every GA and Angelus of Benedict XVI at the Vatican or Castel Gandolfo.... As though the reporters had not been proved wrong again and again since Benedict XVI's first trip abroad to Cologne in thinking he could never possibly draw the crowds John Paul II did. But why do they keep bashing their heads repeatedly against, literally, the Rock?

Nonetheless, one must admire the fact that the AP reporters were not embarrassed at all to file such diametrically opposed stories about the actual welcome compared to what they had predicted earlier with unabashed Schadenfreude...The headline to the AP's lead story today tries to cover up their previous (and persistent) 'mis-underestimation', as George W Bush would say, not just of Benedict XVI but of the particular hold that the figure of the Pope has for the Catholic faithful..

Pope's arrival in Mexico
sparks surprising emotion
By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN and ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON


LEON, Mexico, March 24 (AP) -- It had become tradition in Mexico. Before daybreak, youths would creep as close as security permitted and serenade their beloved Pope John Paul II with a song of greeting and celebration.

Now a new, less familiar pope had come, seeking to strengthen his own ties with the largest Spanish-speaking Catholic nation.

So well before dawn Saturday, two dozen youths from a Guadalajara church group gathered near the school where the Pope Benedict XVI was staying. "We sang with all our heart and all our force," said Maria Fernanda de Luna, a member of the group. "It gave us goosebumps to sing 'Las Mananitas' for him."

Songs, joyful throngs, church bells and confetti welcomed Benedict as he began his first trip to Mexico, a celebration that seemed to erupt spontaneously out of what had been a thin, sun-dazed crowd.

As Pope Benedict XVI's plane appeared in the shimmering heat of Friday afternoon, people poured from their homes. They packed sidewalks five and six deep, screaming ecstatically as the pope passed, waving slowly. Some burst into tears.

Many had said moments earlier that they could never love a pope as strongly as Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II. But the presence of a Pope on Mexican soil touched a chord of overwhelming respect and adoration for the papacy itself, the personification for many of the Catholic Church, and God. Thousands found themselves taken aback by their own emotions.

[I will never understand why journalists who report on the Catholic Church do not grasp this fundamental fact of how Catholics feel about the Pope -whoever he is at the moment. Our faith tells us that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth. He is the personification of the message of Christ - that is primarily why pilgrims flock to see him at the Vatican or anywhere else he may be.

Journalists, including Catholic ones, who write as though a Pope's 'popularity' were purely a factor of who he is, should learn this lesson, but they don't. The years of John Paul II helped mislead them to believe that it was for him personally - Karol Wojtyla - that the crowds turned out. They forget how similar crowds turned out for Paul VI who was the first pilgrim Pope of the modern era.

So, all the wrong-headed Cassandras, who would have liked nothing better than for Benedict XVI to be 'boycotted' by the crowds, keep eating crow every time! And why has the fact never registered with these Benedict detractors that, from the very beginning, Benedict XVI was drawing more crowds at St. Peter's than John Paul II ever did alive, to tell them that, as different a personality as he is, Benedict XVI does have a personal factor - in addition to the fact that he is Pope - that works just as well as John Paul II's did, even if in a different way?]

As a girl, Celia del Rosario Escobar, 42, saw John Paul II on one of his five trips to Mexico, which brought him near-universal adoration.

"I was 12 and it's an experience that still makes a deep impression on me," she said. "I thought this would be different, but, no, the experience is the same."

"I can't speak," she murmured, pressing her hands to her chest and starting to cry.

Belief in the goodness and power of the Pope runs deep in Guanajuato, the most observantly Catholic state in Mexico, a place of deep social conservatism and the wellspring of an armed uprising against harsh anti-clerical laws in the 1920s. [The AP reporters seem to be using the 'Catholicity' of Guanajuato to explain the Pope-effect-cum-Benedict-phenomenon - as if it would be a different story if he had visited some other part of Mexico, even its least Catholic part! Just because they predicted earlier that 'the crowd will be thin', that he 'stirs no passions', that he will be dogged not by crowds but by 'the shadow of John Paul II'.]

Some in the crowd came for literal healing, a blessing from the Pope's passage that would cure illness, or bring them more work. Others sought inspiration, rejuvenation of their faith, energy to be a better parent.

Many said the Pope's message of peace and unity would help heal their country, traumatized by the deaths of more than 47,000 people in a drug war that has escalated during a government offensive against cartels that began more than five years ago.

In a speech on the airport tarmac shortly after arriving, Benedict said he was praying for all in need, "particularly those who suffer because of old and new rivalries, resentments and all forms of violence."

He said he had come to Mexico as a pilgrim of hope, to encourage Mexicans to "transform the present structures and events which are less than satisfactory and seem immovable or insurmountable while also helping those who do not see meaning or a future in life."

No part of Mexico has been spared at least a small scrape with drug gang violence, but Escobar said she hopes that Benedict will help turn around a society devastated by the drug trade and the brutal violence it spawns.

"I would like him to raise the consciousness of those people who are hurting Mexico, those involved in drug addiction, in the mafia," Escobar said. "I hope that we have will more respect for life."

Antonio Martinez, 57, said he wanted relief from diabetes and divine intervention that would bring him more than occasional work in Leon's shoe factories. He stood by the side of the road, resting against his bicycle, waiting for a glimpse of the Pope.

"Simply greeting the Pope and receiving his blessing can change our lives," Martinez said. "I believe that my health will improve, that more sources of work will appear."

The faithful lined more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) of the Pope's route from the airport into Leon shouting the ultimate welcome: "Benedict, brother, you are now Mexican!"
The Pope responded to the greeting as he stepped off his plane to wild cheers and the clamor of ringing bells.

"This is a proud country of hospitality, and nobody feels like a stranger in your land," Benedict said. "I knew that. Now I see it and now I feel it in my heart."

The Pope had few public events on Saturday, but people from all over Mexico started pouring into a sprawling campground in the city of Silao to prepare for a papal Mass on Sunday.

Jose Luis Perez Daza, a 47-year-old lawyer who came by bus from Mexico City, wore a hat to protect himself from the hot sun on a three-mile (five-kilometer) trudge to the campsite with his sleeping bag.

Popes "have a personality, a positive energy," he said. "The simple fact of seeing him is a great satisfaction."

On Friday, Luz del Carmen Castillo Silva, a 15-year-old student at a Catholic women's technical college, said she came five hours from the city of Tlaxcala to strengthen a faith that already had her attending daily Mass.

"I want to become another person when I see the Pope, ministering to people, speaking with God. ... Seeing the Pope, we see the love that we have for Christ," she said. {Out of the mouth of the simple folk, the expression of faith that supposedly sophisticated journalists have never quite grasped. And they don't even seem to try, or they would not constantly come up with clunkers like the pre-visit situationers written by the wire agencies.]

The weeklong trip to Mexico and Cuba is Benedict's first to both countries, and it will be a test of stamina for the Pope, who turns 85 next month. At the airport Friday in Rome, he used a cane, apparently for the first time in public, while walking about 100 yards (meters) to the airliner's steps.

Papal aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Benedict has been using the cane in private for about two months because it makes him feel more secure and not for any medical reason. He left the cane aside as he stepped off the plane in Mexico. [Benedict XVI is German and very pragmatic. He will use the cane when he feels he needs it, and will do without it - in public or in private - when he does not feel the need. It is not about vanity at all.]

For the record, here was AP's earlier version of the above story - the one they had to file yesterday after the arrival. It starts by covering up their tracks - the situationer they had filed before the arrival.

Pope's arrival in Mexico
sparks surprising emotion
By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON and MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN

LEON, Mexico, March 23 (AP) — There was little excitement in Leon in the hours before the Pope arrived.

Crowds were thin. Spectators napped under trees. Vendors complained about the low turnout here in the conservative heartland of Mexico's Roman Catholicism.

Then, as Pope Benedict XVI's plane appeared in the shimmering heat of Friday afternoon, people poured from their homes. They packed sidewalks five and six deep, screaming ecstatically as the Pope passed, waving slowly. Some burst into tears. [What! Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans spontaneously, miraculously, had a mass epiphany as soon as the Pope had landed so they all came, when they they had absolutely no intention of doing so at all?]

Many had said moments earlier that they could never love a Pope as strongly as Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II. But the presence of a Pope on Mexican soil touched a chord of overwhelming respect and adoration for the papacy itself, the personification for many of the Catholic Church, and God. Thousands found themselves taken aback by their own emotions... [The next few paragraphs, starting with the story of Celia Escobar, are identical to those used in the latter story above, and ends with some of the 'down' statistics AP had cited in their pre-arrival stories..]

Many businesses and schools closed in Leon on Friday, and thousands of people were traveling in on buses from across Mexico. But the city was not at full capacity.

About 30 percent of the city's 6,000 hotel rooms were still empty Friday, said Fabiola Vera, president of the Association of Hotels and Motels of Leon. She said people might have been discouraged by rumors that there weren't enough rooms.

SO! WHEN WILL THE MEDIA EVER LEARN? Not just, at least, to know the faith they are reporting on - one story yesterday, I think Reuters, said the Pope would 'deliver a Mass', but to be objective (not to project their own perceptions to 'the people' they then quote, or misquote, liberally) and fair to Benedict XVI, who has not done anything to them except prove their animus wrong (and whose fault is it anyway that they have and hold - and hang on for dear life - to such hostile and uninformed biases ?)

How can these opinion-makers (by virtue of 24/7 info-streaming in all possible ways in our day, and the loss of boundaries between objective news story and editorialized reporting, the media have become opinion-makers, whether we like it or not) treat a man with such eminent qualities and credentials as Joseph Ratzinger has that he was always a 'star' in whatever firmament he found himself - even if he had never become Pope - as if he were a dismissible lightweight, never mind if he is Pope? It says something of our time that MSM can adulate someone like Barack Obama and actually see him as a Messiah whereas they treat the true Vicar of Christ dismissively, almost with contempt!

Their historical horizon seems to go back no farther than 1978, seeing John Paul II as the only 'standard' for Popes, great and exceptional as he is, that any echoes in the Benedict XVI of the great Doctors and Fathers of the Church, not to mention the great Popes Leo and Gregory, are completely inexistent for them. If only they could live long enough for a Benedictus Magnus to come into his own, no thanks to them! Thank God the annals of the Church do not depend on them.



Isn't it amazing that one year later, the same comment applies, under different conditions, only this time even more poignantly and cuttingly!

I must apologize for having been unable to do any work in the Forum all day yesterday, Palm Sunday.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/03/2013 03:15]