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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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ROME, MAY 2, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The International Union of Superiors-General will have an audience with Benedict XVI during its plenary meeting focused on "weaving a new spirituality which generates hope and life for all."
The May 6-10 meeting in Rome will bring together 850 superiors-general of women's religious congregations. They will meet with the Pope on Monday.
Issues including the environment, interreligious dialogue, laity, migration, refugees and spirituality will be discussed during the plenary meeting.
The president of the union, Sister Therezinha Rasera of the Sisters of the Divine Savior, explained the focus of the meeting with this question: "Contemplating our world, hearing its cries, its needs, its thirst, its yearnings, what is the thread that we, women religious, leaders of our congregations, are called to weave now …?"
Code: ZE07050209
Date: 2007-05-02
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Average Age of Those Scheduled for Priesthood Is 35
WASHINGTON D.C., MAY 2, 2007 (Zenit.org).- U.S. bishops' data on those to be ordained this year shows that their average age is 35 and one in three were born outside the United States.
Researchers gathered information from 282 seminarians (including 221 future diocesan priests and 60 religious), approximately 60% of the estimated 475 men who are expected to be ordained.
Statistics
-- Seven in 10 report their primary race as Caucasian, European American, or white.
-- Of the 33% of ordinands born outside the United States, the largest numbers come from Vietnam, Mexico, Poland and the Philippines.
-- Some 6% are converts to the Catholic faith.
-- More than six in 10 ordinands have a college degree from before entering the seminary.
-- Half of responding ordinands attended a Catholic elementary school.
-- About two-thirds of the group had full-time jobs before going to the seminary.
-- The average age at which they began considering a vocation was 17.
The Georgetown University-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate compiled the information. The organization conducts the survey each year for the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Vocations and Priestly Formation.
Code: ZE07050211
Date: 2007-05-02
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Vatican Aide Says Challenge Is Preserving Tradition
ROME, MAY 2, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The challenge for Latin America is preserving a "great Catholic tradition," for which the upcoming episcopal conference in Brazil will be a key event, says a Vatican official.
Guzmán Carriquiry Lecour, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, spoke with the Italian magazine Il Consulente Re about the 5th General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean, to be held in Brazil this month.
Benedict XVI will inaugurate the conference in Aparecida on May 13.
The Pope has asked Carriquiry to attend the conference as an expert.
Indigenous cultures
In the interview, the 63-year-old Uruguayan professor spoke about modern attempts to revitalize practices from pre-Columbian civilizations.
"The great symbols of Latin American unity are not indigenous ones because, before the arrival of the Spaniards and Portuguese, the continent was totally fragmented -- a Babel -- without the slightest awareness of itself," he said.
"The true symbols of unity are Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Christ of the Andes, the Church as the sacrament of unity among our peoples in Catholicism," he added. "The Gospel incarnated in the peoples is the deepest element of the historical-cultural originality that we call Latin America."
Carriquiry spoke of the changes facing indigenous peoples, many of whom migrate to large Latin American cities to escape poverty. He calls them "sectors which, for far too long, have been humiliated, exploited and marginalized."
"Indigenous people demand respect, dignity and access to all the benefits of education, work, cultural progress, genuine human promotion, solidarity and justice toward the most needy -- to be truly integrated within the national societies and to take part as fully entitled citizens in the building of nations," the Vatican aide pointed out.
"However," he added, "another matter altogether is trying to rekindle sorcerers, shamans, ancient indigenous cosmogonies -- the attempt of an arbitrary archaism, stemming more from ideological manipulation than from a true answer to the needs and demands of indigenous communities."
With Peter's successor
For the first time, representatives from the United States, Canada, Spain and Portugal will vote at the bishops' general conference, a change that Carriquiry called "a very favorable gesture."
"Aparecida will be a Catholic event," he said. "Indeed, the Catholic imprint is to be found particularly in the fact that the Pope himself has summoned the conference, chosen the theme and wished to personally inaugurate the symposium in Aparecida, which is to be […] marked by a collegial impulse, in communion with Peter's successor.
"The crucial point for the bishops of Latin America is to safeguard and replicate the great Catholic tradition of our peoples.
"This tradition, Latin America's most valuable gift, the most significant wealth of its peoples, is besieged and sometimes eroded by dominating cultural factors, which are widespread by international communication powers, increasingly hostile to Catholicism."
Protestant conversions
Carriquiry said that he considers the "main challenge" not to be the growing influence of Protestantism in the subcontinent.
Rather, "it is fundamental to return to the sources of our faith, to carry out the 'getting to the essential' about which Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, in order to avoid getting caught up in secondary issues," the Vatican aide said.
He added: "In this sense, the first thing to do is to look within ourselves, at home, to see whether and in what way the event of Christ's presence is a surprising and decisive fact in the lives of people, families, communities and nations."
Culture of death
The undersecretary of the Vatican dicastery mentioned hunger, disease, misery, drug trafficking and "the unconstrained political violence of guerrilla and even of terrorist activity" as "signs of death" in Latin America.
He added: "The continent grows economically, perhaps in a 'showy' way, but the struggle against poverty and the scandal of enormous inequalities are not faced appropriately.
"In large cities, insecurity and delinquency are an everyday matter. A 'global culture' is being extended and strong pressures are exerted toward overlooking and trivializing even the abominable crimes of mass abortion, the proposal of euthanasia and genetic manipulation.
"Thank God, our democracies are holding out; but more and more autocratic deviations are arising, with the risk of gradually smothering those democratic liberties that were reconquered during the 1980s at the cost of so much suffering and sacrifice, even of human lives."
Continental evangelization
Among the issues to be dealt with in Aparecida, the undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity points out that "one idea launched by the [bishops] is that of a great 'post-Aparecida' continental evangelizing mission."
"For the moment," he said," the plan is not fully defined. It is important that the conference should truly reach the hearts of Latin Americans, and give rise to a tremendous spiritual and missionary drive."
The 5th General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean will gather some 300 participants, including delegate bishops and special envoys. The conclusions of the conference will serve to orient the Church's pastoral action in the region for the coming years.
Code: ZE07050228
Date: 2007-05-02
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Race Unites Palestinians and Israelis
VATICAN CITY, MAY 2, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI hopes that the marathon-pilgrimage from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, which included Palestinians, Israelis and people from five other nations, would serve to promote peace in the Holy Land.
The April 23-28 marathon-pilgrimage, which was open to everyone, was 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) long and started at the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem and ended at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
At the starting line, Archbishop Josef Clemens, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, read a message from the Pope addressed to those present for the event.
The message was signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and translated into Hebrew.
It said: "His Holiness, while expressing his sincere wish that this event might favor dialogue among different cultures and religions, unites himself to the pilgrims and participants present and assures them that he will remember them in his prayers to the Lord so that the Holy Land, the Middle East and the whole world might know a time of real and stable peace."
Some 180 runners participated; the oldest was 60 and the youngest was 5.
Blessed flame
The runners were preceded by the "flame of peace" which had been blessed by Benedict XVI.
In the first part of the race, 50 Palestinians ran together. After arriving at a checkpoint, 50 Israeli runners joined the group.
Before the marathon began, Monsignor Liberio Andreatta, the delegate administrator of Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, issued a call for peace "so that hearts of pilgrims and the legs of these athletes may go where diplomacy has not been able to."
The initiative was organized, for the fourth consecutive year, in part by the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, the Vatican institution whose mission is to evangelize through pastoral tourism and the ministry of pilgrimage.
Code: ZE07050208
Date: 2007-05-02
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Continues Reflection on Origen of Alexandria
VATICAN CITY, MAY 2, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The privileged place to encounter God is by falling in love with him, specifically through prayerful reading of Scripture, says Benedict XVI.
The Pope said this today at the general audience in St. Peter's Square, attended by some 30,000 people. The Holy Father continued with his reflections on early figures of the Church, today focusing again on Origen of Alexandria.
"Origen," the Pontiff said, "constantly mixes his exegetic and theological works with experiences and suggestions relating to prayer. Despite the theological wealth found in his thought, his is never a purely academic treatment; it is always founded on the experience of prayer, on contact with God."
"He is convinced that the privileged path to knowing God is love and that one cannot give an authentic 'scientia Christi' without falling in love with him," he added.
Benedict XVI quoted Origen's works, citing one passage that shows "the highest mystical levels" of the Alexandrian's prayer.
"Often -- God is a witness to this -- I felt that the Bridegroom drew very near to me; afterward he would leave suddenly, and I could not find that which I searched for. Again I have the desire for his presence, and he returns, and when he appears, when I hold him in my hands, he leaves again and once he is gone I begin again to search for him," the Pope quoted.
Teaching on the Church
Benedict XVI explained that Origen taught about the priesthood of the laity.
"These conditions -- right conduct, but above all, the welcoming and study of the Word -- establish a genuine 'hierarchy of holiness' in the common priesthood of all Christians."
The Holy Father mentioned Origen's idea that the "path of perfection 'is for everyone,' so that 'the eyes of our heart' will contemplate wisdom and truth, which is Jesus Christ."
The Pontiff concluded by citing one of Origen's homilies: "When you turn your heart's gaze to contemplate wisdom and truth and the only Son of God, your eyes will see God. O happy gathering, that of whom Scripture speaks as having their eyes fixed on him! How I would like for this gathering to receive a similar witness, that the eyes of all, of the unbaptized and of the faithful, of women and men and young children, not the eyes of the body, but those of the soul, look at Jesus!"
Code: ZE07050205
Date: 2007-05-02
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2007-05-02 - The rector of the Major Seminary in Ankawa slams the grave crisis affecting the Church in Iraq, which he blames on terrorists and fanatics but also the indifference of the country’s political leadership towards minorities. The number of Christians has dropped by half; only 200-300,000 have not fled their homes.