POPE'S 300TH ROMAN PARISH VISIT

VATICAN CITY, DEC 15, 2001 (VIS) - John Paul II sent a letter to Cardinal Camillo Ruini, his vicar general for the diocese of Rome, for his pastoral visit this Sunday, December 16, to the Roman parish of St. Maria Josefa of the Heart of Jesus. This will be the three hundredth parish community visited by the Holy Father during his pontificate.

The Pope recalled the death of Cardinal Ugo Poletti (Cardinal Ruini's predecessor) who accompanied him, he writes, "in the first part of this pilgrimage" and added that, "for me, visiting Roman parishes has always been a joyful commitment. Spending the morning or afternoon among the faithful, in different areas ... celebrating Mass ... greeting children, young people, pastoral counsellors; reawakening in each person the commitment to a new evangelization has been and still is of great importance to me in progressively drawing nearer to the human, social, and spiritual reality of the diocese - all the more for a pope 'come from a far-away country'. ... Everywhere I have announced the same Gospel and broken the same bread: Christ, Redeemer of man."

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