VOLUNTEER WORK: A REASON FOR CONFIDENCE IN A TIME OF CRISIS

VATICAN CITY, 11 NOV 2011 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican, the Pope received bishops with pastoral responsibility for charitable work and representatives of European charity organisations. They are currently participating in a meeting promoted by the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum" in the context of the European Year of Volunteering.

"At the present time, marked as it is by crisis and uncertainty", the Pope began, speaking English, "your commitment is a reason for confidence, since it shows that goodness exists and that it is growing in our midst. ... For Christians, volunteer work is not merely an expression of good will. It is based on a personal experience of Christ", Whose "grace helps us to discover within ourselves a human desire for solidarity and a fundamental vocation to love. ... We also become visible instruments of His love in a world that still profoundly yearns for that love amid the poverty, loneliness, marginalisation and ignorance that we see all around us.

"Of course", he added, "Catholic volunteer work cannot respond to all these needs, but that does not discourage us. ... The little that we manage to do to relieve human needs can be seen as a good seed that will grow and bear much fruit; it is a sign of Christ's presence and love. ... This is the nature of the witness which you, in all humility and conviction, offer to civil society. While it is the duty of public authority to acknowledge and to appreciate this contribution without distorting it, your role as Christians is to take an active part in the life of society, seeking to make it ever more humane, ever more marked by authentic freedom, justice and solidarity".

Benedict XVI went on: "Our meeting today takes place on the liturgical memorial of St. Martin of Tours. Often portrayed sharing his mantle with a poor man, Martin became a model of charity throughout Europe and indeed the whole world. Nowadays, volunteer work as a service of charity has become a universally recognised element of our modern culture. Nonetheless, its origins can still be seen in the particularly Christian concern for safeguarding, without discrimination, the dignity of the human person created in the image and likeness of God. If these spiritual roots are denied or obscured and the criteria of our collaboration become purely utilitarian, what is most distinctive about the service you provide risks being lost, to the detriment of society as a whole".

The Pope concluded his remarks by inviting young people "to discover in volunteer work a way to grow in the self-giving love which gives life its deepest meaning".
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AUDIENCES

VATICAN CITY, 11 NOV 2011 (VIS) - The Holy Father today received in audience:

- Archbishop Fernando Filoni, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples.

- Cardinal Velasio De Paolis C.S., president emeritus of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See.
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OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS

VATICAN CITY, 11 NOV 2011 (VIS) - The Holy Father:

- Appointed Msgr. Janusz Stepnowski of the clergy of Lomza, Poland, bureau chief of the Congregation for Bishops, as bishop of Lomza (area 11,500, population 554,433, Catholics 548,548, priests 497, religious 183). The bishop-elect was born in Ostroleka, Poland in 1958 and ordained a priest in 1985. He studied in Spain, then in Italy where he also worked in pastoral care in the diocese of Terni. In Rome, apart from his service at the Congregation for Bishops, he has worked for the Tribunal of the Roman Rota and as chaplain at the Convent of the Daughters of the Presentation. He succeeds Bishop Stanislaw Stefanek, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

- Appointed Bishop Carlos Alberto de Pinho Moreira Azevedo, auxiliary of Lisbon, Portugal, as delegate of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
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