ADDENDUM TO
GA TODAY
More pictures, and OR's sidebar from the 11/26/09 issue:
Sidelights after the GA
Translated from
the 11/26/09 issue of
A Shoah survivor
Handshakes and come small talk in German between two compatriots and contemporaries. Cäcilie Peiser from Frankfurt, 84, and a Jewish survivor of the Shoah, was presented to Benedict XVI by Salesian Fr. Norbert Hofmann, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism. And she gave the Pope a copy of her biography.
"After Kristallnacht in 1938," she recalled, "at the age of 13, I was forced to escape with my younger sister Jutta and other children to Holland."
It was only after the liberation of the Netherlands, while caring for survivors of the extermination camps who were afflicted with tuberculosis that she learned her mother and younger brother and been deported and killed in a lager (her father died earlier), while her older sister Hannah was able to escape to Haifa.
"I, too, in 1946, decided to go to Palestine, where I worked for the cause of peaceful coexistence of peoples, but I returned to Germany in 1957 to care for handicapped children."
Cäcilie is the founder and current honorary president of the association 'Child Survivors' which cares for children - now aged people - who survived the Shoah but psychologically crippled by their traumatic experiences.
Pilgrims from Nagasaki
A delegation of 300 Japanese pilgrims, led by ten bishops, came from Nagasaki to personally thank the Pope for the beatification last year in Nagasaki of 187 Japanese martyrs.
They gave the Pope a reliquary with relics of Blessed Peter Kibe, a Jesuit, who was martyred with his companions in the early 17th century.
Catholic TV staff from Lebanon
From Lebanon, a delegation from TeleLumiere-Noursat, which is planning to set up a media city' just outside Beirut to 'transmit a message of peace to the nations of the Middle East'. The project has the support of all the Christian patriarchs of the East, Catholic adn Orthodox.
Support for the Amazon Indians
From Perugia, volunteers of the Associazione insieme fratelli indios (AIFI) [Association of brothers together with the Indians], dedicated to assistance and promotion of the native peoples of Brazil's Amazon region.
AIFI works with the Capuchin missionaries of Umbria, who are celebrating this year the centenary of their presence in Brazil.
Other Italian groups
From Cervia, an Adriatic seaside town of Romagna, a delegation brought the city's annual donation of salt from their saltbeds to the Vatican, in a tradition that dates back to 1455.
From the shrine of San Francesco di Paola (a Tyrrhenian seaside town in Calabria, the region that makes up the 'toe' of the Italian boot), friars of the saint's Order of Minims and a youth delegation came to commemorate the 25th anniversary of John Paul II's visit to the shrine, and to invite Benedict XVI.
"We hope to see him in Calabria", said their Father Provincial, Rocco Benvenuto.
From Gravina, in Puglia, a delegation from the Centro Studi Benedetto XIII, who was born in Gravina (1649-1730). They were joined by members of other Italian dioceses - Benevento, Manfredonia and Vieste - that are linked to Papa Orsini's episcopate.
Benedict XIII's biography, published in 1731, a year after his death, was written in German and printed in Gothic lettering - 2000 pages recently translated to Italian, a copy of which was presented to Benedict XVI today.
And finally, a picture without a story ...
The caption simply says these are two clothing executives presenting the Pope with some custom-made jackets.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/11/2009 12:37]