FAMILY OF JESUS-MARY CELEBRATES JUBILEE WITH POPE

VATICAN CITY, SEP 15, 2000 (VIS) - The Holy Father this morning met with 60 religious and lay members of the Congregation of Jesus-Mary, founded by Saint Claudine Thevenet, who are in Rome for a meeting and to celebrate the Jubilee Year 2000.

Addressing them in French, the Pope recalled the "the objective of your spiritual family is 'to better know Jesus Christ and to work in the Church to make God and His merciful goodness known'."

"I greatly encourage you," he said, "to renew with generosity the gift of yourselves to Christ in welcoming the gift that He gives you of Himself and in remaining in intimate union with Him. In your lives as disciples of Christ, as in your apostolic commitments, keep alive within you an active ecclesial conscience. ... Be ever more efficacious signs of the presence of Christ the Savior among His brothers, mankind, especially the least of these! May no one among them feel excluded from the love which the Father proposes to all His children!"

"Following Saint Claudine Thevenet," the Holy Father concluded, "be for everyone, and especially children and young people, ardent witnesses of pardon and mercy."

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