HOLY FATHER WELCOMES ITALIAN AND SPANISH PILGRIMS TO ROME

VATICAN CITY, JUL 8, 2000 (VIS) - The Holy Father this morning in the Clementine Hall received in audience various groups of pilgrims from Italy and Spain, in Rome to celebrate the Jubilee Year 2000. He reminded them that "during the Great Jubilee, a time of grace and mercy, each one is called to respond to God's voice through a serious examination of conscience, efforts for purification and penance, and more intense prayer."

To a group of consecrated, he said: "In the wake of Christ, Obedient Servant, be ever ready to receive with joy God's plan for you, witnessing the fact that Love is capable of filling the heart of the human person. Your consecration expresses the intimate nature of the Christian vocation and the longing of the entire Church-Spouse for union with the One Spouse."

To the lay faithful, John Paul II said: "May your dignity as children of God be mirrored in your every activity, your every concrete commitment. In what you do, in work, in your dedication to the family, in educating your children, in social and political service, in the spheres of culture and information, may your continual exercise in faith, hope and charity, shine forth."

Greeting pilgrims from Santiago de Compostela, Spain, the Pope addressed them in their language and recalled that, as they had recently celebrated a Jubilee, "you know well the riches that God sends forth in a Holy Year. I hope for you that you welcome with joy your going through the Holy Door in this Great Jubilee, so that your hearts and your communities open themselves to the new life that is Christ and that, with Him, the source of life and hope, the Church of Santiago strengthens its faith, its fidelity and its apostolic vigor in the face of the challenges of the third millennium."

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