Vatican
City, 25 November 2013 (VIS) – “St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us
that each person will love his neighbour as he loves himself, and
will therefore enjoy his neighbour's goods as if they were his own.
Thus, the joy of one will increase inasmuch as the joy of others
increases”. With these words, this morning Pope Francis received
three thousand Greek Catholic pilgrims from Ukraine and Belarus, in
Rome to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the translation of the
relics of St. Josaphat to the Vatican Basilica. In the morning
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for the
Oriental Churches, celebrated the Divine Liturgy along with the major
archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, His Beatitude
Sviatoslav Shevchuk.
At
midday, the Holy Father went to the Basilica to greet the pilgrims
gathered in St. Peter's Square, and said that “the best way to
commemorate St. Josaphat is to love each other and to love and serve
the unity of the Church. We are supported in this by the courageous
witness of the many more recent martyrs, who constitute a great
richness and great comfort for your Church”. Francis expressed his
hope that “the intense communion that you wish to deepen every day
within the Catholic Church may help you also to build bridges of
fraternity with other Churches and ecclesial communities in Ukraine
and in other countries where your communities are present”.
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