NOTICE

Vatican City, 10 February 2014 (VIS) – No VIS bulletin will be transmitted tomorrow, the eighty-fifth anniversary of the institution of Vatican City State by the signing of the Lateran Pacts. Service will resume on Wednesday, 12 February.

POPE FRANCIS TO POLISH BISHOPS: THE CHURCH IN POLAND MUST REACH OUT TO THE PERIPHERIES

Vatican City, 7 February 2014 (VIS) – As the canonisation of Blessed John Paul II approaches, Pope Francis today received in audience the bishops of the Polish Episcopal Conference at the end of their five-yearly “ad limina” visit. He referred to the future saint as “a great Pastor who … guides us from Heaven, and reminds us of the importance of spiritual and pastoral communion between bishops”, and invited the former Pope's compatriots to ensure that nothing and no-one may bring divisions between them, as they are “called to build communion and peace, rooted in fraternal love, and to offer an encouraging example to all”, bringing “the strength of hope” to the Polish people.

The conversations that the Bishop of Rome has held in these days with the Polish prelates have confirmed that the Church in Poland “has great potential for faith, prayer, charity and Christian practice”, and that this “favours the Christian formation of the people, motivated and convinced practice, and the availability of laypeople and religious to collaborate actively in ecclesial and social structures”. However, there has been a certain decline in various aspects of Christian life, and this requires “discernment, and a search for underlying reasons and methods for facing new challenges, such as, for example, the idea of freedom without limits, hostile tolerance or indeed distrust of the truth, or resistance to the Church's legitimate opposition to dominant relativism”.

The family, “the place where one learns to live in difference and to belong to others, and where parents transmit faith to their children”, should occupy a central position in the ordinary pastoral care of bishops, also because “nowadays marriage tends to be viewed as a form of mere emotional satisfaction that can be constructed in any way or modified at will. Unfortunately this vision also influences the mentality of Christians, promoting a tendency towards divorce or separation. Pastors are called upon to ask themselves how they can help those who experience this situation, so that they are not excluded from God's mercy, from the fraternal love of other Christians and the care of the Church for their salvation; on how to help them not to abandon their faith and to enable them to raise their children in the fullness of Christian experience”. In this respect, he commented on the need for bishops to consider how to improve the preparation of young people for marriage, so that they are able to “discover the beauty of this union, based on love and responsibility”, and how to “help families to live and appreciate not only moments of joy, but also those of pain and weakness”.

In view of the next World Youth Day, which will be held in Krakow in 2016, the Pope turned his thoughts to the young “who, along with the elderly, are the hope of the Church” and to whom today's technological world “offers new possibilities for communication, but at the same time reduces interpersonal relationships based on direct contact, on the exchange of values and shared experiences. However, in the hearts of the young there is the yearning for something deeper, which allows their personalities to bloom fully. We must work towards meeting this wish”. A good opportunity, is offered by catechesis, which reaches the majority of Polish schoolchildren, who reach a good level of understanding of the truth of faith. “The Christian religion, however, is not an abstract science, but rather the essential knowledge of Christ, a personal relationship with God Who is love”.

The third theme of the Pope's address was the vocation to the priesthood and to consecrated life. After commenting that there are many Polish priests who exercise their ministry in the local Churches and also abroad and in missions, he praised the universities and faculties of theology throughout the country which “provide good intellectual and pastoral preparation” which must always be accompanied by “human and spiritual formation”.

In priestly ministry, “the light of witness can be obscured or hidden under a bushel if there is a lack of missionary spirit, of the wish to go out to the peripheries, with an ever-renewed missionary conversion to seek or encounter those who await Christ's Good News. This apostolic style also demands a spirit of poverty, of abandonment, to allow freedom of proclamation and sincere witness to charity”. With regard to vocations to consecrated life, especially in woman, “it is worrying to see a decline in numbers of those joining religious congregations, even in Poland: a complex phenomenon, with multiple causes. I hope that female religious Institutes may continue to be, in a way suited to our times, privileged spaces for the affirmation and human and spiritual growth of women. May religious women be ready to face tasks and missions, even those which are difficult and demanding, which bring to the fore their intellectual, emotional and spiritual capacities, their personal talents and charisms”.

The Pope concluded by encouraging care for the poor as, “in Poland too, despite current economic development in the country, there are many who are in need, unemployed, homeless, sick, and marginalised, and also many families – especially larger family units – who do not have sufficient means to live and to educate their children. Be close to them! I know how much the Church does in Poland in this field, demonstrating great generosity not only at a national level but also in other countries throughout the world. I thank you and your communities for your work. Continue to encourage your priests, religious and all faithful to have the 'imagination of charity', and to practice it at all times. And do not forget those who for various reasons leave the country in search of a better life elsewhere. Their growing numbers and their needs perhaps require greater attention on the part of the Episcopal Conference. Accompany them with the suitable pastoral care, so that they may conserve the faith and religious traditions of the Polish people”.

SATISFACTORY PROGRESS IN THE PREPARATION OF THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE HOLY SEE AND PALESTINE

Vatican City, 7 February 2014 (VIS) – On 6 February 2014, the Bilateral Commission of the Holy See and the State of Palestine, which is responsible for finalising the text of a Global Agreement following on the Basic Agreement, signed on 15 February 2000, held a Plenary Session in Ramallah at the PLO Headquarters to review and approve the work done at the level of the joint technical group following the last Plenary Meeting held in the Vatican on 26 September 2013.

The talks were chaired by Hanna Amireh, member of Executive Committee of the PLO and head of the Presidential Higher Committee for Church Affairs of the State of Palestine, and by Archbishop Antoine Camilleri, under-secretary for Relations with States of the Holy See.

The discussions took place in a cordial and constructive atmosphere. Taking up the issues already examined at the technical level, the Commission noted with great satisfaction the progress achieved in drawing up the final draft of the text of the Agreement, which deals with essential aspects of the life and activity of the Catholic Church in Palestine. Both sides agreed to continue in the efforts to complete the constitutional and internal procedures in view of the signature of the Agreement.

The Palestinian side expressed its warm welcome to Pope Francis in view of his upcoming visit to the Holy Land.

AUDIENCES

Vatican City, 7 February 2014 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father received in audience:

- Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, S.D.B., of Santiago de Chile, Chile, president of the Permanent Committee for the Episcopal Conference of Chile, accompanied by Bishop Alejandro Goic Karmelic of Rancagua, vice president; Archbishop Cristian Caro Cordero of Puerto Montt, member; Archbishop Fernando Natalio Chomali Garib of Concepcion, member; and Bishop Ignacio Francisco Ducasse Medina of Valdivia, secretary general.

- Gjoko Gjorgjevski, ambassador of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the Holy See, on his farewell visit.

- Fifteen prelates from the Polish Episcopal Conference on their “ad limina” visit:

- Archbishop Jozef Piotr Kupny of Wroclaw, Breslavia, with his auxiliary, Bishop Andrzej Siemieniewski;

- Bishop Stefan Cichy of Legnica, with his auxiliary, Bishop Marek Mendyk;

- Bishop Ignacy Dec of Swidnica, with his auxiliary Bishop Adam Balabuch;

- Archbishop Wiktor Pawel Skworc of Katowice;

- Bishop Jan Kopiec of Gliwice, with his auxiliary, Bishop Gerard Alfons Kusz;

- Bishop Andrzej Czaja of Opole, with his auxiliary, Bishop Pawel Stobrawa;

- Archbishop Waclaw Depo of Czestochowa;

- Bishop Henryk Marian Tomasik of Radom, with his auxiliary Bishop Adam Odzimek;

- Bishop Grzegorz Kaszak of Sosnowiec.

MESSAGE FOR 29TH WORLD YOUTH DAY

Vatican City, 6 February 2014 (VIS) – We publish below the full text of the message the Holy Father has sent to the young people preparing for the 29th World Youth Day 2014, which will take as its theme: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.

“Dear Young Friends,

How vividly I recall the remarkable meeting we had in Rio de Janeiro for the Twenty-eighth World Youth Day. It was a great celebration of faith and fellowship! The wonderful people of Brazil welcomed us with open arms, like the statue of Christ the Redeemer which looks down from the hill of Corcovado over the magnificent expanse of Copacabana beach. There, on the seashore, Jesus renewed his call to each one of us to become his missionary disciples. May we perceive this call as the most important thing in our lives and share this gift with others, those near and far, even to the distant geographical and existential peripheries of our world.

The next stop on our intercontinental youth pilgrimage will be in Krakow in 2016. As a way of accompanying our journey together, for the next three years I would like to reflect with you on the Beatitudes found in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. This year we will begin by reflecting on the first Beatitude: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'. For 2015 I suggest: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God'. Then, in 2016, our theme will be: 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy'.

1. The revolutionary power of the Beatitudes

It is always a joyful experience for us to read and reflect on the Beatitudes! Jesus proclaimed them in his first great sermon, preached on the shore of the sea of Galilee. There was a very large crowd, so Jesus went up on the mountain to teach his disciples. That is why it is known as 'the Sermon on the Mount'. In the Bible, the mountain is regarded as a place where God reveals himself. Jesus, by preaching on the mount, reveals himself to be a divine teacher, a new Moses. What does he tell us? He shows us the way to life, the way that he himself has taken. Jesus himself is the way, and he proposes this way as the path to true happiness. Throughout his life, from his birth in the stable in Bethlehem until his death on the cross and his resurrection, Jesus embodied the Beatitudes. All the promises of God’s Kingdom were fulfilled in him.

In proclaiming the Beatitudes, Jesus asks us to follow him and to travel with him along the path of love, the path that alone leads to eternal life. It is not an easy journey, yet the Lord promises us his grace and he never abandons us. We face so many challenges in life: poverty, distress, humiliation, the struggle for justice, persecutions, the difficulty of daily conversion, the effort to remain faithful to our call to holiness, and many others. But if we open the door to Jesus and allow him to be part of our lives, if we share our joys and sorrows with him, then we will experience the peace and joy that only God, who is infinite love, can give.

The Beatitudes of Jesus are new and revolutionary. They present a model of happiness contrary to what is usually communicated by the media and by the prevailing wisdom. A worldly way of thinking finds it scandalous that God became one of us and died on a cross! According to the logic of this world, those whom Jesus proclaimed blessed are regarded as useless, 'losers'. What is glorified is success at any cost, affluence, the arrogance of power and self-affirmation at the expense of others.

Jesus challenges us, young friends, to take seriously his approach to life and to decide which path is right for us and leads to true joy. This is the great challenge of faith. Jesus was not afraid to ask his disciples if they truly wanted to follow him or if they preferred to take another path. Simon Peter had the courage to reply: 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life'. If you too are able to say 'yes' to Jesus, your lives will become both meaningful and fruitful.

2. The courage to be happy

What does it mean to be 'blessed' (makarioi in Greek)? To be blessed means to be happy. Tell me: Do you really want to be happy? In an age when we are constantly being enticed by vain and empty illusions of happiness, we risk settling for less and 'thinking small' when it come to the meaning of life. Think big instead! Open your hearts! As Blessed Piergiorgio Frassati once said, 'To live without faith, to have no heritage to uphold, to fail to struggle constantly to defend the truth: this is not living. It is scraping by. We should never just scrape by, but really live' (Letter to I. Bonini, 27 February 1925). In his homily on the day of Piergiorgio Frassati’s beatification (20 May 1990), John Paul II called him 'a man of the Beatitudes' (AAS 82 [1990], 1518).

If you are really open to the deepest aspirations of your hearts, you will realize that you possess an unquenchable thirst for happiness, and this will allow you to expose and reject the 'low cost' offers and approaches all around you. When we look only for success, pleasure and possessions, and we turn these into idols, we may well have moments of exhilaration, an illusory sense of satisfaction, but ultimately we become enslaved, never satisfied, always looking for more. It is a tragic thing to see a young person who 'has everything', but is weary and weak.

Saint John, writing to young people, told them: 'You are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one'. oung people who choose Christ are strong: they are fed by his word and they do not need to ‘stuff themselves’ with other things! Have the courage to swim against the tide. Have the courage to be truly happy! Say no to an ephemeral, superficial and throwaway culture, a culture that assumes that you are incapable of taking on responsibility and facing the great challenges of life!

3. Blessed are the poor in spirit...

The first Beatitude, our theme for the next World Youth Day, says that the poor in spirit are blessed for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. At a time when so many people are suffering as a result of the financial crisis, it might seem strange to link poverty and happiness. How can we consider poverty a blessing?

First of all, let us try to understand what it means to be 'poor in spirit'. When the Son of God became man, he chose the path of poverty and self-emptying. As Saint Paul said in his letter to the Philippians: 'Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness'. Jesus is God who strips himself of his glory. Here we see God’s choice to be poor: he was rich and yet he became poor in order to enrich us through his poverty. His is the mystery we contemplate in the crib when we see the Son of God lying in a manger, and later on the cross, where his self-emptying reaches its culmination.

The Greek adjective ptochos (poor) does not have a purely material meaning. It means 'a beggar', and it should be seen as linked to the Jewish notion of the anawim, 'God’s poor'. It suggests lowliness, a sense of one’s limitations and existential poverty. The anawim trust in the Lord, and they know that they can count on him.

As Saint Therese of the Child Jesus clearly saw, by his incarnation Jesus came among us as a poor beggar, asking for our love. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that 'man is a beggar before God' and that prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst and our own thirst.

Saint Francis of Assisi understood perfectly the secret of the Beatitude of the poor in spirit. Indeed, when Jesus spoke to him through the leper and from the crucifix, Francis recognized both God’s grandeur and his own lowliness. In his prayer, the Poor Man of Assisi would spend hours asking the Lord: 'Who are you?' 'Who am I?' He renounced an affluent and carefree life in order to marry 'Lady Poverty', to imitate Jesus and to follow the Gospel to the letter. Francis lived in imitation of Christ in his poverty and in love for the poor – for him the two were inextricably linked – like two sides of one coin.

You might ask me, then: What can we do, specifically, to make poverty in spirit a way of life, a real part of our own lives? I will reply by saying three things.

First of all, try to be free with regard to material things. The Lord calls us to a Gospel lifestyle marked by sobriety, by a refusal to yield to the culture of consumerism. This means being concerned with the essentials and learning to do without all those unneeded extras which hem us in. Let us learn to be detached from possessiveness and from the idolatry of money and lavish spending. Let us put Jesus first. He can free us from the kinds of idol-worship which enslave us. Put your trust in God, dear young friends! He knows and loves us, and he never forgets us. Just as he provides for the lilies of the field, so he will make sure that we lack nothing. If we are to come through the financial crisis, we must be also ready to change our lifestyle and avoid so much wastefulness. Just as we need the courage to be happy, we also need the courage to live simply.

Second, if we are to live by this Beatitude, all of us need to experience a conversion in the way we see the poor. We have to care for them and be sensitive to their spiritual and material needs. To you young people I especially entrust the task of restoring solidarity to the heart of human culture. Faced with old and new forms of poverty – unemployment, migration and addictions of various kinds – we have the duty to be alert and thoughtful, avoiding the temptation to remain indifferent. We have to remember all those who feel unloved, who have no hope for the future and who have given up on life out of discouragement, disappointment or fear. We have to learn to be on the side of the poor, and not just indulge in rhetoric about the poor! Let us go out to meet them, look into their eyes and listen to them. The poor provide us with a concrete opportunity to encounter Christ himself, and to touch his suffering flesh.

However – and this is my third point – the poor are not just people to whom we can give something. They have much to offer us and to teach us. How much we have to learn from the wisdom of the poor! Think about it: several hundred years ago a saint, Benedict Joseph Labre, who lived on the streets of Rome from the alms he received, became a spiritual guide to all sorts of people, including nobles and prelates. In a very real way, the poor are our teachers. They show us that people’s value is not measured by their possessions or how much money they have in the bank. A poor person, a person lacking material possessions, always maintains his or her dignity. The poor can teach us much about humility and trust in God. In the parable of the pharisee and the tax-collector, Jesus holds the tax-collector up as a model because of his humility and his acknowledgement that he is a sinner. The widow who gave her last two coins to the temple treasury is an example of the generosity of all those who have next to nothing and yet give away everything they have.

4. … for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

The central theme of the Gospel is the kingdom of God. Jesus is the kingdom of God in person; he is Immanuel, God-with-us. And it is in the human heart that the kingdom, God’s sovereignty, takes root and grows. The kingdom is at once both gift and promise. It has already been given to us in Jesus, but it has yet to be realised in its fullness. That is why we pray to the Father each day: 'Thy kingdom come'.

There is a close connection between poverty and evangelisation, between the theme of the last World Youth Day – 'Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations!' – and the theme for this year: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'. The Lord wants a poor Church which evangelises the poor. When Jesus sent the Twelve out on mission, he said to them: 'Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff; for the labourers deserve their food'. Evangelical poverty is a basic condition for spreading the kingdom of God. The most beautiful and spontaneous expressions of joy which I have seen during my life were by poor people who had little to hold onto. Evangelisation in our time will only take place as the result of contagious joy.

We have seen, then, that the Beatitude of the poor in spirit shapes our relationship with God, with material goods and with the poor. With the example and words of Jesus before us, we realize how much we need to be converted, so that the logic of being more will prevail over that of having more! The saints can best help us to understand the profound meaning of the Beatitudes. So the canonization of John Paul II, to be celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter, will be an event marked by immense joy. He will be the great patron of the World Youth Days which he inaugurated and always supported. In the communion of saints he will continue to be a father and friend to all of you.

This month of April marks the thirtieth anniversary of the entrustment of the Jubilee Cross of the Redemption to the young. That symbolic act by John Paul II was the beginning of the great youth pilgrimage which has since crossed the five continents. The Pope’s words on that Easter Sunday in 1984 remain memorable: 'My dear young people, at the conclusion of the Holy Year, I entrust to you the sign of this Jubilee Year: the cross of Christ! Carry it throughout the world as a symbol of the love of the Lord Jesus for humanity, and proclaim to everyone that it is only in Christ, who died and rose from the dead, that salvation and redemption are to be found'.

Dear friends, the Magnificat, the Canticle of Mary, poor in spirit, is also the song of everyone who lives by the Beatitudes. The joy of the Gospel arises from a heart which, in its poverty, rejoices and marvels at the works of God, like the heart of Our Lady, whom all generations call 'blessed'. May Mary, Mother of the poor and Star of the new evangelisation help us to live the Gospel, to embody the Beatitudes in our lives, and to have the courage always to be happy.”