POPE RECEIVES CATHOLIC PATRIARCH
OF ANTIOCH OF THE SYRIANS
VATICAN CITY, 19 JUN 2009 (VIS) - In the Vatican this morning, Benedict XVI received His Beatitude Ignace Youssif III Younan, the new Catholic patriarch of Antioch of the Syrians, accompanied by various members of the Synod of that Church.
"Divine Providence", said the Pope in his address, "has made us ministers of Christ and shepherds of His one flock. ... Christ Himself, our Lord, appointed the Apostle Peter as the 'rock' upon which He founded the spiritual edifice of the Church, calling upon His disciples to remain in full unity with Peter, under his sure guidance and that of his Successors".
"Over the course of your millenarian history", he continued, "your communion with the Bishop of Rome has always been accompanied by faithfulness to the spiritual tradition of the Christian East. These are complementary aspects of a single heritage of the faith which your venerable Church professes".
The Pontiff then recalled how, in order to emphasise "the Eucharistic roots" of this communion, he had granted "ecclesiastica communio" to the patriarch when he was elected head of the Synod.
Addressing the patriarch directly, he added: "With a public sign - yesterday's Eucharistic celebration in the basilica of St. Mary Major - you most appropriately demonstrated the close ties binding you to the bishop of Rome and the Universal Church".
Finally the Holy Father expressed his satisfaction at the return to full activity of the Synod of this Church and encouraged "efforts being made to favour unity, understanding and forgiveness, which must always be considered as priorities for the edification of the Church of God".
"I pray continuously, among other things, for peace in the Middle East, especially for Christians living in the blessed land of Iraq, whose sufferings I offer every day to God during the Eucharistic sacrifice".
Right photo: The Patriarch and his delegation with the Pope; left photo: The Patriarch at St. Peter's Square before the General Audience last Wednesday.
6/20/09
I apologize for failing to pay due attention to this story yesterday. The Holy Father's address, which was the main item on Page 1 of the OR today, was delivered in French, so I have to translate that.
Also, I will try to find any photos of the Mass in Santa Maria Maggiore that the Pope refers to. Today's OR carries a number of inside-page articles about the Patriarch's visit, and there's a brief item that the Mass was celebrated according to the Syro-Antiochian rite, with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, and Cardinal Bernard Law, Arch-Priest of Santa Maria Maggiore, concelebrating with the Patriarch. The OR today also carries the homily delivered by Cardinal Sandri.
Pope prays every day for peace
in Middle East, Christians in Iraq
By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY, June 19 (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI said he prays every day for peace in the Middle East and especially for Christians in Iraq.
"I pray constantly for peace in the Middle East, in particular for Christians who live in the beloved Iraqi nation; I present their sufferings to the Lord in the Eucharistic sacrifice every day," the Pope said in an audience with the new head of the Syrian Catholic Church.
Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan and members of the synod of the Syrian Catholic Church met with Pope Benedict in a special audience June 19 at the Vatican.
Patriarch Younan was the head of the Newark-based Syrian-rite diocese in the United States and Canada from 1995 until his January election as the new patriarch of Antioch.
The Syrian Catholic Church has archdioceses in Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Sudan. The church includes approximately 200,000 members around the world, including in the Holy Land, Turkey, Venezuela, the United States and Canada.
In his address, Pope Benedict urged members of the Syrian Catholic Church to continue to focus their lives on the Eucharist. It is the bread of life that "nourishes your communities and makes them grow in unity and charity," he said.
He said they should draw strength from the Eucharist so they can "overcome the difficulties that your church has experienced in recent years, and follow the paths of forgiveness, reconciliation and communion."
THE HOLY FATHER'S ADDRESS
Here is a translation of the Holy Father's address to the Patriarch of Antioch of the Syrians and his delegation. It was delivered in French:
Béatitude,
The visit that you are making to Rome to venerate the tombs of tHE Apostles and meet with the Successor of Peter brings great joy to me. Today, I renew with sincere and fraternal affection the greeting and kiss of peace in Christ that we exchanged at the start of tHE year, after your election as Patriarch of Antioch of the Syrians.
I thank you for the kind words you addressed to me in the name of your patriarchal Church. I also wish to express my acknowledgment to Their Beatitudes Cardinal Ignace Moussa Daoud, emeritus Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches; and Ignace Pierre Abdel Ahad, both emeritus Patriarchs of your Church, as well as to all the members of the Episcopal Synod.
My gratitude comes with prayers particularly for you, Beatitude, as the new Patriarch, as I extend my fraternal solidarity during your first steps in your new ecclesial service.
Beatitude, Divine providence has made us ministers of Christ and Pastors of his one flock. Let us therefore keep the eye of the heart on him, the Supreme Pastor and Bishop of our souls, assured that once we had taken on the episcopal service, he will never abandon us.
It is Christ himself, our Lord, who designated the Apostle Peter as the 'rock' on which would rest the spiritual edifice of the Church, asking his disciples to walk in full unity with him, under his sure guidance and that of his successors.
In the course of your more than a millennium of history, communion with the Bishop of Rome has always gone hand in hand with faithfulness to the spiritual tradition of the Christian Orient, both being complementary aspects of a single patrimony of faith that your venerable Church professes.
Together, we profess the same Catholic faith, uniting our voices to that of the Apostles, martyrs and saints who preceded us, raising to God the Father, in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, a hymn of praise and thanksgiving for the immense richness of this gift which has been entrusted to our fragile hands.
Dear brothers of the Syrian Catholic Church, I thought of you specially during the solemn Eucharistic celebration of the Feast of Corpus Domini. In the homily at the Mass in front of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, I cited the great Doctor of the Church, St. Ephrem the Syrian, who said, "During the Last Supper, Jesus immolated himself; on the Cross, he was immolated for all the rest".
This beautiful observation allowed me to underscore the Eucharistic root of the ecclesiastica communio that I granted to you, Beatitude, after your election by the Synod.
And most opportunely, you have shown a public sign of this close link which unites you to the Bishop of Rome and the universal Church during the Eucharistic sacrifice you celebrated yesterday at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, with the participation of my specially mandated representative, the Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri.
Indeed, it is the Eucharist that brings together our diverse traditions within the unity of the one Spirit, making of them a treasure for all the people of God.
May the celebration of the Eucharist, source and summit of ecclesial life, keep you anchored within the ancient Syrian tradition which prides itself on keeping the language of the Lord Jesus himself, and at the same time, may it open to you the horizon of ecclesial universality.
May it always make you attentive to what the Spirit suggests to the Church; may it open the eyes of your hearts so that you may scrutinize the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel and that you may know how to comprehend the hopes and expectations of mankind, responding generously to the needs of those who live in the most serious conditions of poverty.
May you draw from the Eucharist, Sacrament of unity and communion, the power to overcome the difficulties that your Church has known in recent years, in order to find once more the paths of forgiveness, reconciliation and communion.
Dear brothers, I thank you once more for your visit which allows me to express to you my profound concern for your ecclesial problems. I greet with satisfaction the full functional recovery of your Synod and I encourage your efforts to promote unity, understanding and forgiveness which you must always consider as priority duties in building up the Church of God.
Moreover, I constantly pray for peace in the Middle East, particularly for the Christians who live in the beloved nation of Iraq, whose sufferings I commend daily to the Lord during the Eucharistic sacrifice.
Finally I wish to share with you one of my major concerns: the spiritual life of priests. Precisely today, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, day of priestly sanctification, I will have the immense joy of opening the Year for Priests, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of the Holy Curate of Ars.
I think that this special jubilee year, which starts just as the Pauline Year is coming to a close, will be a fecund opportunity for the whole Church.
On Calvary, Mary was with the Apostle John at the foot of the Cross.
Today, we too spiritually come to the foot of the Cross, with all our priests, to look towards Him who was pierced on the side and from whom we receive the fullness of all grace.
May Mary, Queen of the Apostles adn Mother of the Church, watch over you, Beatitude, over the Synod, and over the entire Syrian Catholic Church.
I assure you that my prayers go with you and I impart the Apostolic Blessing, which I extend to all the faithful of your venerable Church throughout the world.
Today's OR also had a separate news item on the words that Patriarch Ignace addressed to the Pope:
'Justice and respect
for the rights of all men'
Translated from
the 6/20/09 issue of
"We have come to Rome to greet you as the Successor of Peter and to live a moment that is very significant in the tradition of the universal Church - that of exchanging ecclesial communion between our two Apostolic Sees, that of Rome which 'presides in charity' (St. Ignatius of Antioch) and that of Antioch where the disciples of Christ were first called 'Christians'."
With these words, Patriarch Ignace Youssef III Younan addressed Benedict XVI at the start of their meeting at the Apostolic Palace on Friday morning.
"Yesterday," he recalled, "on the day dedicated to the memory of St. Ephrem of Syria, patron of our Church, who was called 'the harp of teh Holy Spirit', we experienced with joy and profound gratitude, the sacramental expression of this communion, in concelebrating the Divine Liturgy according to the Syriac rite of Antioch, with your representative, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches."
The Patriarch then referred to the first ordinary synod that took place after he was elected to the Patriarchal See of Antioch.
"In this synod," he said, "thanks to your prayers and your paternal guidance, we committed ourselves to episcopal collegiality in a spirit of fraternal communion, as we took on our responsibilities as pastors of our beloved Church."
He also referred to the Pontiff's recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land during which, he said, Benedict XVI "conveyed a message of peace, tolerance, and reconciliation to all the communities of the region that has been torn apart and divided by unjust conflicts without end."
"Holiness," he added, "you are well aware of the nature and reasons for our concerns, as those of other Christian communities in the Middle East. Our calling is to be witnesses for God, who is good and merciful towards all men, by living his message of love. We have come to draw courage from you, Holiness, so that we may remain faithful to our pluri-century mission."
He said the Church of Antioch of the Syrians would continue to pray so that the Pope "may be able to convince the powerful of the earth to work for peace based on justice and the respect of fundamental human rights in all the countries of the world, but in particular, in some countries of the Middle East, like Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine".
His Beatitude recalled the words said by Benedict XVI at the Greek Melkite church in Amman "which expressed with unequivocal clarity and great affection your paternal concern for the Christian communities and Oriental Churches of apostolic origin".
He quoted the Pope: "The ancient living treasure of the traditions of the Oriental Churches enrich the universal Church and should never be understood merely as an object to preserve passively."
He thanked the Pope "who does not cease to encourage us to bear witness to our faith, witn fidelity to our centuries-old traditions that go back to the first communities of the Church, while living the words of the Gospel in our respective fields."
He noted the happy coincidence of their meeting with the Pope and the start of the Year for Priests, and ended by vowing "faithfulness and unshakable attachment to the Chair of Peter".
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/06/2009 22:03]