VATICAN CITY, MAR 18, 2002 (VIS) - The Holy Father this morning welcomed the rector, priests, teachers and seminarians of the St. Pius X Regional Seminary of Catanzaro, in southern Italy, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the seminary's founding.
"You, who do you say that I am?" asked the Pope. "This is the question that Jesus asked those rather special seminarians, the Apostles. And He asks this same question of each of you, called to be evangelizers in the region of Calabria." He recalled his visit to Catanzaro and this seminary in 1984 and said that the words he spoke then are still current today: "'The more people become dechristianized and the more they become prey to uncertainty and indifference, the more they need to see in priests that radical faith that is like a lighthouse in the night or like a rock to which they can cling to'."
John Paul II stressed that a seminary must be "a place of silence" and "a house of prayer" where those who will be future priests can have an intimate encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ Who will prepare them "to become teachers of the faith."
"The period of formation in the seminary," he went on, must be "a special time of silence and awaiting, of poverty and communion, of research for God and love for one's brothers, especially for the least of these, making the seminary community a privileged expression of the Church, the 'seed and beginning' on the earth of the Kingdom of Christ and God."
The Pope closed his remarks by recalling that tomorrow is the solemnity of St. Joseph who, he noted, "shines in the Church for his singular vocation lived in silence, in an attentive search for God's loving plan and in total dedication to Christ."
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