SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF MALTA CELEBRATES JUBILEE

VATICAN CITY, OCT 19, 2000 (VIS) - This morning in St. Peter's Basilica, Pope John Paul welcomed several thousand Knights and Dames of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Prior to this audience Cardinal Angelo Sodano, secretary of state, presided at a concelebrated Mass in the basilica at the Altar of the Chair of Peter.

The Knights, Dames, members of the Order's ambulance corps and national and international structures from all continents have been in Rome since October 16 on pilgrimage and to celebrate their Jubilee. Groups of Knights, many of whom are doctors, serve as volunteers in the first aid stations of Rome's major basilicas.

In his talk to them, the Holy Father recalled the special nature of the Jubilee Year, calling it "a year of grace, a year of remission of sins and the punishment for sins," a year of reconciliation, conversion, sacramental penance and "a year linked 'to the granting of indulgences in a broader way than in other times'." He added that, "in the Bull of Indiction, I wrote: 'A sign of God's mercy, especially necessary today, is that of charity, which opens our eyes to the needs of those who live in poverty and on the margins of society."

He then pointed to the "praiseworthy initiatives which your Order carries out in diverse contexts of moral and spiritual destitution. ... These are initiatives which constitute a valid encouragement and almost a model for all who desire to contribute with their efforts to creating a new world, capable of giving back dignity and hope to those who are oppressed by modern forms of slavery and wounded in body and spirit."

"I refer in a special way," added the Pope, "to the prophetic service in favor of the marginalized and excluded, which you fulfill with the ardor of an authentic campaign for the integral promotion of the human being." He remarked that "this campaign to defend and value man" is a "centuries-old mission of your Order, ... a true strategy of love as seen in your commitments to hospitals, leprosariums, first aid stations, schools for children and rest homes for the elderly."

"May the Jubilee," John Paul II concluded, "stimulate you to be, in the contexts within which you work, incessant witnesses of authentic fraternal communion. May each of you have a more intense enthusiasm to bear witness to the Gospel of charity in a world dominated by egoism and sin."

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