MESSAGE FOR HISPANIC-AMERICAN DAY

VATICAN CITY, MAR 1, 2001 (VIS) - Made public today was the text of the annual Message of the presidency of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America on the occasion of Hispanic-American Day, which will be celebrated in the dioceses of Spain on March 4th, the first Sunday of Lent.

In the Message, dated January 6, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, and Bishop Cipriano Calderon, vice-president of the same pontifical commission, write: "'Go ... to meet our brothers of America'. It is the appeal which the Spanish episcopate makes to the priests, men and women religious, and the laity of the nation for Hispanic-American Day."

"It is an initiative," the Message specifies, "in perfect harmony with what the Pope has repeated many times, each time with greater vigor, throughout the Jubilee Year."

Cardinal Re and Bishop Calderon expressed the hope that "Hispanic-American Day, at the dawn of the new millennium, will see in the Spanish priests and faithful the evangelizing impulse, looking to America as the 'Continent of Hope' which, evangelized in the last five centuries, has been transformed into an evangelizing continent, turning to Europe, Africa, and Asia."

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