TO CARMELITE SISTERS: UNITE CONTEMPLATION AND MISSIONARY DRIVE

VATICAN CITY, SEP 29, 2000 (VIS) - This morning, the Pope received participants in the 18th general chapter of the Carmelite Missionary Sisters. The congregation has a presence in 35 countries on four continents.

John Paul II asked for "abundant divine gifts" for the new superior general, Maria Esperanza Izco, and her councilors, that they may guide the congregation "with prudence, accompanying their sisters with a fraternal spirit in order that they become women of experience of God, audacious in their response to the challenges of the mission in the third millennium."

"Indeed," he continued, "harmoniously bringing together the contemplative dimension and the missionary impulse, two fundamental pillars of your religious identify, is a particularly acute necessity in an age so often threatened by the fragmentation or superficiality of human existence."

The Holy Father thanked the religious for their commitment "to the ever-urgent task of evangelization and service to the cause of man, especially to the most needy." He concluded by asking them not to cease "giving attention to the emerging necessities of our time, bringing thereto a response born in the heart of Christ and in the mission of the Church."

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