TWENTY-ONE NEW PRIESTS, A "FESTIVE DAY" FOR CHURCH OF ROME

VATICAN CITY, MAY 15, 2005 (VIS) - Appearing at his study window almost 20 minutes late for the noon Regina Coeli prayer, Pope Benedict, in unscripted remarks, asked the estimated 40,000 faithful in St. Peter's Square "to please excuse me for the great delay. I had the grace to ordain 21 priests and such a harvest for God lasts quite a bit of time, therefore, thank you for your understanding."

  He went on to say that the ordination Mass "marks a moment of important growth for our community. It receives life, in fact, from these ordained ministers, above all through the service of  the Word of God and the Sacraments. This therefore is a festive day for the Church of Rome And for the new priests this is in a special way their Pentecost: I repeat my greetings to them and pray that the Holy Spirit will always accompany their ministry."

  The Holy Father noted that "the happy coincidence between Pentecost and the priestly ordinations invites me to underscore the indissoluble tie that exists, in the Church, between the Spirit and the institution. I referred to this last Saturday when I took possession of the chair of the bishop of Rome at St. John Lateran. The chair and the Spirit are intimately linked in reality, as are the charism and the ordained ministry. Without the Holy Spirit the Church would be reduced to a merely human organization, weighed down by her very structures. But in turn, in the plans of God, the Spirit habitually uses human mediation to act in history. Precisely for this reason, Christ, Who constituted His Church on the foundation of the Apostles gathered around Peter, also enriched her with the gift of His Spirit so that, over the centuries. He could comfort her and lead her to the full truth.

  "May the ecclesial community," he said in closing remarks, "remain always open and docile to the action of the Holy Spirit in order to be among men a credible sign and effective instrument of God's action!"

  After the Regina Coeli prayer, Benedict XVI made brief remarks in German and Italian to the pilgrims in the square.
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