PONTIFICAL MISSION SOCIETIES IN U.S. INAUGURATE NEW WEB SITE

VATICAN CITY, FEB 21, 2003 (VIS) - Over 150 diocesan directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States were welcomed this morning to the Vatican by the Pope who expressed his pleasure at joining them as they meet in Rome and inaugurate a new website.

He told them that "the growth of the Internet in recent years provides an unprecedented opportunity for expanding the Church's missionary outreach, since it has become a primary source of information and communication for so many of our contemporaries, especially the young. It is my hope that the new Pontifical Mission Societies website will awaken in the Catholics of the United States a deeper appreciation of the Church's universal missionary mandate."

"I trust that the new site," he said, "will draw many people to a deeper faith in Christ, lead to an increase in missionary vocations and call forth a greater commitment to the proclamation of the Gospel 'ad gentes' and the new evangelization of traditionally Christian countries."

John Paul II, in concluding, expressed the hope that the work of the Societies "be a true leaven to missionary zeal among the Catholics of the United States, and yield abundant fruit for the spread of Christ's kingdom in the new frontiers now opening up before us."

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