PRESENTATION OF POPE'S HOLY THURSDAY LETTER TO PRIESTS

VATICAN CITY, APR 2, 2001 (VIS) - This morning in the Holy See Press Office, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos and Archbishop Csaba Ternyak presided at the official presentation of the "Letter of the Holy Father Pope John Paul II to Priests for Holy Thursday 2001."

Cardinal Castrillon, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, said he wished to underline three aspects of the Holy Father's Letter to priests. "In the first place," he began, "this is a Letter from a Father who is filled with affection for his sons. The Holy Father affirms that he intends his reflections as words 'of friendship and, I might say, of intimacy'. ... With moving words, he thanks all priests for the intense work they accomplished during the Jubilee Year in making Christ present and he also admires their humble and hidden, discreet and tenacious work."

The cardinal said "the second aspect consists in the 'Duc in altum!' in the divine invitation to cast out into the deep in the vast ocean of divine mercy! ... The Holy Father chooses the theme of sacramental Reconciliation, an instrument of divine mercy for all of mankind."

The third aspect of the Pope's Letter, he observes, "exhorts, in a practical and concrete way, all priests to approach the Sacrament of pardon and to offer, with the urgency of Christ's charity, the sublime gift of mercy to all those who request it when they hear them in sacramental confession."

For his part, Archbishop Ternyak, congregation secretary, underscored the "spiritual echoes" of the experiences of Reconciliation during the Jubilee Year 2000, including the Church's "humbly and solemnly celebrated request for pardon on March 12, 2000 in St. Peter's Basilica."

"The Holy Year," the archbishop went on, "was a fruitful period" and "a year of rediscovery of the Sacrament of Penance. ... Official reports from Rome's major basilicas indicate about 360,000 confessions during the year in St. Peter's Basilica and about 320,000 each at St. Mary Major, St. John Lateran and St. Paul's. And we cannot forget the 2,000 confessors who heard young people's confessions at the Circus Maximus during World Youth Day."

He noted that "the Holy Father encourages priests to not forget such an intense and promising experience, but rather to increase and facilitate to the greatest possible degree access to the Sacrament of Reconciliation."

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