ANNOUNCEMENT OF CHRIST MUST REACH EVERYONE

VATICAN CITY, JUN 8, 2001 (VIS) - Made public yesterday evening was the text of the Pope's Message to the participants of the Diocesan Assembly of Rome, which is being held in the Basilica of St. John Lateran from June 7 to 9 on the theme: "Starting afresh from Christ for the permanent mission in the city."

The Pope recalls that the Apostolic Letter "Novo millennio ineunte" and the Letter sent to the dioceses last February 14, guided the preparation of this Assembly and are a point of reference in formulating the pastoral program for the upcoming years.

"We ask the Lord," he writes, "that holiness may truly be for us the 'high standard of ordinary Christian living', in order that the announcement of Christ can reach all of the men and women of our city and be a source of conversion and renewal for personal and family life, as for every milieu of work and culture."

Addressing the priests, the Holy Father exhorts them to "direct and encourage everyone to 'put out into the deep', in order to bring the announcement of the Gospel into the homes, milieux, neighborhoods, and the entire city."

"I ask Christian families," he continues, "to open their homes to welcome other brothers and sisters in centers of listening to the Gospel and more extensively to take to heart the situations of moral, spiritual, or material difficulty which many other families experience, offering them a concrete witness of friendship, of listening, and of sharing."

John Paul II also exhorts the religious and the laity, to "'go out', to witness to and announce the Gospel in the great 'open sea' of the world of work, of culture, of society. In particular, to renew to the youth the invitation which I extended to them at Tor Vergata to be 'the morning sentinels' of this third millennium which has just begun."

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