MESSAGE TO SISTERS OF OUR LADY OF SUFFRAGE

VATICAN CITY, SEP 14, 2002 (VIS) - John Paul II wrote a message to Sister Fabiola Detomi, superior general of the Institute of the Minim Sisters of Our Lady of Suffrage which is celebrating the general chapter of the congregation, focused on the theme "Give witness to Christ, our hope in a world that is changing."

Referring to the theme, the Pope writes that "Christ, our hope is at the root of everything and is the end to which everything is directed. His mysterious presence keeps alive that eschatological tension of our existence that each believer must have. Your congregation considers this eschatological tension of our existence one of its fundamental characteristics which you received as a legacy from your blessed founder."

Afterward, the Holy Father recalls the founder of the order, Blessed Francesco Faa de Bruno, whom he elevated to the altars in 1988. He underlines that he worried about his final destination, "encouraged always by the interior desire to cooperate in the salvation of his brothers. The final goal of man is, in effect, to find God."

In this context, the Pope cites the construction of a church by the blessed in Turin dedicated to Our Lady of Suffrage and says to the religious: "To worry about 'suffrage', about praying for the repose of the souls in Purgatory: this is ... your characteristic charism which prompts you to constant prayer for those who have gone before you. This same charismatic intuition is a concrete stimulus to fill every earthly day of those goods which do not pass or fade away."

John Paul II concludes by urging the religious to be "joyful and tireless heralds of hope for humanity of our time, so many times obscured by violence and injustices and enclosed by merely earthly horizons. ... Help each brother and sister to discover that everlasting 'not yet' and 'beyond' to which we are all headed."

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