THE POPE LIVES HIS OLD AGE WITH GREAT NATURALNESS

VATICAN CITY, OCT 26, 1999 (VIS) - This morning in the Holy See Press Office, Cardinal James Francis Stafford and Bishop Stanislaw Rylko, respectively president and secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, presented "The Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to the Elderly."

Cardinal Stafford indicated that with this letter the Pope "proffers his own loving and authoritative 'first hand' contribution in order to give, in this Year of the Elderly and with a view of the Jubilee, the true meaning of old age."

For his part, Bishop Rylko underlined that the Holy Father, "following his Letters to the young in 1985, to families in 1994, to children in 1994, to women in 1995 and to artists this year - and not counting those Letters that, since the beginning of his pontificate, he writes every year on Holy Thursday to priests - this time wishes to write to the elderly. This is a further sign of how much John Paul II, considered by everyone as being a great 'communicator', values this form of personal and direct dialogue with the various categories of faithful."

"The Pope," he went on, "lives his old age with great naturalness. He has no fear in placing before the eyes of the world the limits and frailties that the years have placed upon him. He does nothing to disguise them. In speaking to young people, he has no difficulty in saying of himself: 'I am an old priest'." John Paul II "continues to fulfill his mission as the Successor of Peter, looking far ahead with the enthusiasm of the only youth that does not deteriorate, that of the spirit, which this Pope maintains intact."

The secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity concluded by affirming that the Letter "has a very personal, almost confidential, tone. It is certainly not an analysis of old age. Rather, it is a very intimate dialogue between people of the same generation."

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