THE CHURCH IN AMERICA MUST SPEAK MORE AND MORE OF JESUS CHRIST

VATICAN CITY, JUN 22, 1999 (VIS) - At midday today, the Pope received participants in the symposium on the "Last Hundred Years in the Evangelization of Latin America," which commemorates the first centenary of the plenary council of that continent.

The Holy Father indicated that "ever since the message of Jesus Christ arrived in the New World, the Popes have had a particular apostolic concern for the American continent."

"The decrees of that council, although not directly applicable to modern day circumstances, constitute a 'memory' which must illuminate, stimulate and assist at this crossroads of history." In those decrees, he said, "may be detected a great anxiety to uphold and exalt the Catholic faith, to train ecclesiastics, to protect divine worship and the celebration of the Sacraments, to promote the education of the young and their instruction in the principles of Christian doctrine, to favor the practice of charity and other virtues."

John Paul II confirmed that, since the council, "the vitality of the Church in America has been growing. Proof of this may be found in the Eucharistic and Marian congresses as well as in the four general conferences of the Latin American Episcopate; held in Rio de Janeiro in 1955, Medellin in 1968, Puebla in 1979 and Santo Domingo in 1992, ... all of which culminated in the celebration (in the Vatican in 1997) of the Synod for America."

The Pope recalled that in the Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, 'Ecclesia in America,' he called on pastors to focus on "the fundamentals: Announce Jesus Christ. ... For this reason, the Church in America must speak more and more of Jesus Christ."

"In participating in this symposium as pastors and historians, you have been considering the future from the point of view of the past. In this task you must proceed objectively, on the basis of real knowledge and not on that of ideologies or partial visions of the facts. I am grateful to you for your work in this field so that the Church, in knowing its own history better, may carry out evangelization programs which are adapted to the new reality."

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