POPE GREETS 20,000 IN ROMAN PRELUDE TO WORLD YOUTH DAY

VATICAN CITY, MAR 22, 2002 (VIS) - As a prelude to the Palm Sunday celebration of World Youth Day in local dioceses and the international youth day that will take place in Toronto next July, John Paul and 20,000 young people from the diocese of Rome gathered in St. Peter's Square yesterday to witness to their faith though testimonials, song and prayer.

The young people gathered in the square at 5:30 p.m. and were joined by the Holy Father shortly after 6 p.m. Among the guests last evening were a brother and sister from Canada whose father lost his life in the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City.

The Pope's talk to the young people focussed on the World Youth Day theme, "You are the salt of the earth .... You are the light of the world."

"I understand your difficulties," John Paul II told the young men and women present. "The many proposals that reach your conscience from every angle certainly do not help you to easily see" the plan that Christ has for you. "Is it not perhaps true that some of your peers live for the moment, choosing from time to time what could appear to be the easiest path? Listen to me! If you do not dedicate time to prayer and do not allow yourselves to be helped by a spiritual guide, the world's confusion will suffocate even God's voice."

"You have asked me: 'What do we have to do to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world?' To answer, we must first remember that God created man in His image, giving him as a first and fundamental vocation that of being in communion with Him."

"Precisely because we are created in God's image," the Pope continued, "we have received from Him that great gift of freedom. If it is not used well, however, freedom can distance us from God. It can make us lose that dignity He gave us. When it is not formed by the Gospel, freedom can be transformed into slavery: the slavery of sin and eternal death."

"Young people of the new millennium, do not abuse your freedom! Do not waste the great dignity that has been given to you as Sons of God. Give yourselves only to Christ. ... In this way you will discover that, only in adhering to the will of God can we be the light of the world and the salt of the earth."

Following the Holy Father's talk and the reading of the Gospel, the group of skaters that had opened the celebration lit candles and skated from the raised part of St. Peter's Square in front of the facade down into the square itself.

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PAPAL MESSAGE TO CHRISTIAN BROTHERS ON OCCASION OF BICENTENARY

VATICAN CITY, MAR 22, 2002 (VIS) - Pope John Paul has sent a Message to the Christian Brothers on the occasion of their 29th General Chapter and the celebration this year of the bicentenary of this congregation founded in Ireland by Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice. He thanked them "in the name of the Church for all that the Christian Brothers have done through the course of two centuries in educating the young."

The Holy Father noted that the congregation was founded "at a time of great social upheaval in Europe and deep distress in Edmund Rice's native Ireland." Notwithstanding it was a time of "poverty and persecution," the "great traditions of Irish Catholic life ... flourished in new and remarkable ways when God stirred people like Edmund Rice to take up the task of educating the young, otherwise condemned to a material, intellectual, moral and spiritual poverty which demeaned not only them but an entire society."

The Pope added that Blessed Edmund "was also upholding the way of the Catholic Church, which has always put education at the very heart of her mission to preach the Gospel."

"The flame of faith lit by your Founder burns brightly still," added John Paul II, "and it is now your task to ensure that this 'fire on the earth' is as creative now as it was in the past. At a time when many cultures are experiencing a crisis in communicating religious and moral values to the young, the educational mission entrusted to you is more important than ever. Yet it is also more challenging, for this is a time when, as Pope Paul VI observed, people 'listen more willingly to a witness than to teachers, and if they do listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses'."

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EUCHARISTIC CONGRESSES: EXPERIENCES OF FAITH AND PRAYER

VATICAN CITY, MAR 22, 2002 (VIS) - This morning the Pope received members of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses who gathered during these days with their president, Cardinal Jozef Tomko, in order to plan the committee's activities.

After thanking those present for their effort to "promote Eucharistic devotion in the whole Church", the Holy Father said: "The Eucharistic Congresses constitute important experiences of faith and intense prayer, because they offer the opportunity to many believers to contemplate Christ's face mysteriously hidden in the sacrament of the Eucharistic."

"You know very well," he concluded, "how important eucharistic devotion is for the life of the Church and for spreading the Gospel. The Eucharist contains the most beautiful spiritual good of the Christian community which is the same Christ who sacrificed himself on the cross for the salvation of humanity. Therefore, continue with determination and enthusiasm in this noble work."

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THIRD EDITION OF THE ROMAN MISSAL IS PRESENTED

VATICAN CITY, MAR 22, 2002 (VIS) - Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez and Archbishop Pio Tamburrino, respectively prefect and secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of Sacraments, presented today the third edition of the Roman Missal in the Holy See Press Office.

Cardinal Medina indicated that the new edition follows editions in 1970 and 1975 and that the decree with which the congregation publishes it was approved by the Holy Father on April 10, 2000. Cardinal Medina said: "The edition that we present is the result of a lot of work of revision and updating which began in 1991 and continued in 1996, years in which the Congregation has celebrated its plenary meetings."

He said that it is "an official, updated edition, to be used for the celebration of the Eucharist in Latin and it forms the immediate base for translations into the national languages."
"The decree of promulgation of this third edition establishes the necessity of a global revision of the missals used up until now through a new presentation of the translated texts to the Holy See for the necessary 'recognitio'," he explained.

This new edition contains some touch-ups and new features in the text of the "Istitio Generalis", that part of the Missal that consists of "a directory about the Eucharistic celebration, with information about its theological, liturgical, pastoral and spiritual character."

Cardinal Medina emphasized that among the new, most relevant developments is "the possibility of administering Holy Communion to the faithful under both species," and that it is "the responsibility of the diocesan bishop to establish norms for his diocese" regarding this issue. In addition, "the diocesan bishop can leave the decision to distribute Holy Communion under both species, outside of the specified cases in which it is not advised, to the discretion of each priest, as pastor of a particular community."

Furthermore, a new chapter (the ninth) was added about liturgical inculturation, in which the "principles and criteria that must be applied when an episcopal conference deems it necessary to introduce in the Missal different adaptations from those anticipated for the same missal" are highlighted. The prefect of the dicastery emphasized that the adaptations "are an exception" and must yield to the "spiritual good of the individual churches, safeguarding the substantial unity of the Roman Rite."

Finally, the cardinal affirmed that various memorials for new saints and patrons, distributed throughout the year, have been included in the universal calendar of the Church. Also, a new Preface for the martyrs has been added, the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary has new formulas and among the votive masses there is now the formula called "De Dei Misericordia."

Archbishop Tamburrino affirmed that this third edition "has taken note of particular adaptations of the Roman Missal in the last thirty years in many local churches through the translations into spoken languages and confirmed by the Holy See. In this sense, the new Roman Missal gathers together some usages already official in the translated Missals and represents a development of the Roman Rite."

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AUDIENCES

VATICAN CITY, MAR 22, 2002 (VIS) - The Holy father today received in audience Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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