WORLD WE LIVE IN HAS GREAT NEED OF GOD

VATICAN CITY, 1 JUN 2010 (VIS) - The traditional procession marking the end of the month of May took place yesterday at 8:00pm in the Vatican Gardens. As the rosary was recited, the procession wound from the Church of St. Stephen of the Abyssinians to the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes.

  The Pope arrived at the Grotto of Lourdes at 9:00pm and briefly addressed the present faithful before imparting the apostolic blessing.

  Remarking on the festivity of the day, the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, the Holy Father commented that with this gesture "we recognize the clearest example and the truest meaning of our path as believers and the path of the Church itself. By its nature, the Church is called to proclaim the Gospel everywhere and at all times, to spread the faith to every man and woman and to every culture".

  "Mary remained with Elizabeth for three months to offer her loving nearness, concrete assistance, and all the everyday services that were needed. In this way, Elizabeth becomes the symbol of the many aged and ill, even more, of all those who need assistance and love. How many of these persons there are today in our families, in our communities, in our cities! And Mary -- who called herself 'the handmaid of the Lord' -- made herself the servant of mankind. More specifically, she served the Lord whom she encountered in her brothers and sisters".

  "It should be noted that 'Mary's charity' is not limited to concrete assistance but achieves its highest form in bestowing Jesus himself, in 'making him present'", the Pope said. "This is the heart and the height of the evangelical mission. This is the true meaning and the most genuine purpose of every missionary path: to offer human beings the living and personal Gospel, which is the Lord Jesus himself".

  "Jesus", he continued, "is the true and only treasure that we have to give humanity. Today's men and women have a profound longing for Him, including when it seems they are ignoring or rejecting Him. The society we live in, Europe, the entire world has great need of Him".

  The Holy Father concluded by underlining that "we have been entrusted with this extraordinary responsibility. Let us live it with joy and devotion so that ours might truly be a civilization in which truth, justice, liberty, and love reign, the fundamental and irreplaceable pillars of a truly shared life that is ordered and peaceful. Let us live this responsibility remaining steadfast in listening to the Word of God, in communal life, in breaking of the bread, and in our prayers. May this be the grace that together this evening we ask of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary".

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STATISTICS ON THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CYPRUS

VATICAN CITY, 1 JUN 2010 (VIS) - Pope Benedict XVI will make an apostolic visit to Cyprus from 4 to 6 June during which the Instrumentum Laboris of the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, will be published. For this occasion, statistics have been compiled concerning the Catholic Church in that country. The information, updated to 31 December 2008, comes from the Central Statistical Office of the Church.

  Cyprus, the capital city of which is Nicosia, has a population of 794,000 of whom 25,000 (3.15%) are Catholic. There is one ecclesiastical circumscription, 13 parishes, and one pastoral centre. There are currently 2 bishops, 30 priests, 60 religious, and one major seminarian.

  A total of 6,347 students attend the 22 centres of Catholic education, from kindergartens to secondary schools. Other institutions belonging to the Church or run by priests or religious in Cyprus include 2 hospitals, 3 clinics, 1 home for the elderly or disabled, and 6 orphanages and nurseries.
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MATTEO RICCI: A GREAT MISSIONARY IN CHINA

VATICAN CITY, 29 MAY 2010 (VIS) - At midday today, the Holy Father received participants in a pilgrimage promoted by the diocese of Macerata-Tolentino-Recanati-Cingoli-Treia and other dioceses of the Italian Marche region, marking the fourth centenary of the death of the Jesuit Fr. Matteo Ricci.

  In his address the Pope recalled how Fr. Ricci, who was born in Macerata and died in China on 11 May 1610, was "a great missionary and an important figure in the announcement of the Gospel in China in the modern age, following the first evangelisation by Archbishop Giovanni da Montecorvino". He "was granted the extraordinary privilege, unthinkable for a foreigner, of being buried in Chinese soil".

  "Fr. Ricci is a unique model of harmoniously blending the announcement of the Gospel with dialogue with the culture of the people to whom it is brought, an example of balance between doctrinal clarity and careful pastoral activity".

  The Pope highlighted how "the work of this great missionary presents two aspects which cannot be separated: the Chinese inculturation of the Gospel message, and the introduction of Western culture and science into China. ... Fr. Ricci did not go to China to bring Western science and culture but to bring the Gospel, to make God known".

  But "this meeting motivated by faith also became a dialogue between cultures", Pope Benedict explained. "It was a disinterested dialogue, free from economic and political aims, lived in friendship; and this makes the work of Fr, Ricci and his disciples one of the most exalted and felicitous points in relations between China and the West".

  "Our admiration for Fr. Ricci must not, however, makes us forget the role and influence of his Chinese counterparts. The decisions he made did not depend on some abstract strategy of inculturation of the faith, but on events as a whole, on the meetings and experiences he accumulated. Thus, his achievements came about thanks also to his meeting with the Chinese, an experience that took many forms but that was particularly intensified through his relations with certain friends and disciples, especially the four famous coverts, 'pillars of the nascent Chinese Church', of whom the first and most well known is Xu Guangqi".

  Addressing the seven thousand faithful present in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father called for "the memory of these men of God dedicated to the Gospel and to the Church, their example of faithfulness to Christ, their profound love for the Chinese people, their intelligence and dedication to study, their virtuous lives, to be a stimulus for us to pray for the Church in China, and for the entire Chinese people, as we do every year on 24 May, addressing ourselves to the Blessed Virgin venerated in the famous shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai.

  May their example, he concluded, "be a stimulus and encouragement to live the Christian faith intensely, in dialogue with various cultures but with the certainty that in Christ lies the true humanism, open to God, rich in moral and spiritual values and able to respond to the most profound desires of the human soul. I too, like Fr. Matteo Ricci, today express my profound esteem for the noble Chinese people and their millennial culture, convinced that a renewed encounter with Christianity will bring abundant fruits of good, just as it then favoured peaceful coexistence among peoples".

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AUDIENCES

VATICAN CITY, 29 MAY 2010 (VIS) - The Holy Father today received in separate audiences:

 - Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

 - Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples.
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ANGELUS: RETURN TO ORDINARY TIME, CHRISTIAN COMMITMENT

VATICAN CITY, 30 MAY 2010 (VIS) - Today, Trinity Sunday "which in a certain sense recapitulates the revelation of God in the Paschal mysteries", the liturgy returns to "ordinary time". However, said the Holy Father in his remarks before praying the Angelus, "this does not mean that the commitment of Christians must diminish; quite the contrary, having entered divine life through the Sacraments, we are now called to remain open to the action of Grace in order to grow in love towards God and neighbour".

  "The human mind and human language are inadequate to explain the relation that exists between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nonetheless the Fathers of the Church sought to explain the mystery of the One and Triune God by putting it into practice with profound faith in their own lives", the Pope told the faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square.

  "The Blessed Trinity comes to dwell in us on the day of Baptism", Benedict XVI explained. "And each time we make the sign of the cross we remember the name of God in which we were baptised. ... The sign of the cross and the name of the living God contain, then, the announcement that generates faith and inspires prayer. And what Jesus promises the Apostles in the Gospel ('when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth'), comes about in the Sunday liturgy when, week after week, priests dispense the bread of the Word and the Eucharist".

  The Holy Father concluded his remarks by quoting a prayer of St. Hilary of Poitiers: "Keep, I pray, this my pious faith undefiled, and even till my spirit departs, grant that this may be the utterance of my convictions: so that I may ever hold fast that which I professed in the creed of my regeneration, when I was baptised in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit".

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