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09/04/2010 (3:45)
The pilgrim season is upon us here at the Vatican, with hundreds of
thousands of people arriving for Easter celebrations. Today on the
Vatican Report we’ll look at the flow of pilgrims in Rome, and how
it changes throughout the year. I’m Carol Glatz, Catholic News
Service Rome correspondent.
And I’m John Thavis, CNS Rome bureau chief. The annual Palm Sunday
and Easter liturgies bring more than 50,000 people to St. Peter’s
Square. It’s the kind of crowd this square was designed for, and
when it happens, you really do feel like that it’s the universal
church. This used to be a spiritual gathering place for Romans and
other Italians. Today the Vatican is an international crossroads.
You see that even at the pope’s weekly audiences, when groups from
every continent hold up signs and sing songs in different languages.
There’s a definite rhythm to the influx of pilgrims. Low season is
winter. That’s the time when the pope’s audience hall has some empty
seats. From Easter to early summer, it’s wall-to-wall people here.
The lines for St. Peter’s and the Vatican Museums stretch for
blocks, and the weekly audience moves outdoors. In the mid-summer
heat, the pope goes away for a couple of months, and the flow of
visitors drops off. Everybody comes back again in September, and
it’s high season again.
What do pilgrims do at the Vatican? Well, they see the pope and get
his blessing, either at his Wednesday audience or his Sunday
appearance at his apartment window. If they’re lucky, they can
attend a papal Mass. The Vatican keeps a rough count, and says that
every year some 3 or 4 million people attend these papal events.
Pilgrims also visit St. Peter’s Basilica: some go to the top of the
dome for a birds-eye view of Vatican City, many go down to the crypt
to visit the tombs of St. Peter and Pope John Paul II and the other
90 popes who are buried there. And they crowd into the Vatican
Museums, where last year more than 4 million people went through the
turnstiles.
Most visitors are happy just wandering through St. Peter’s or the
museums. Others take guided tours, which are offered by freelancers
on the perimeter of Vatican City. Some pilgrims are familiar with
the Vatican’s jumbled landscape of art and architecture. Others are
much less prepared. One tour guide who took a group to the Sistine
Chapel was asked: “If this is the Sixteen, where are the other
fifteen chapels?” The Sistine was actually named after Pope Sixtus
IV, who commissioned the chapel.
It is possible to get away from the crowds. You can join small
groups and visit the Vatican Gardens or the archeological
excavations beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. That takes planning -- you
have to make reservations, usually months in advance. But it can be
done, just go to the website saintpetersbasilica.org.
There’s a lot of other information available at the Vatican’s
various Web sites. For example, thanks to a Villanova University
project, online visitors can now take a 360-degree virtual tour of
the Sistine Chapel, seeing Michelangelo’s frescoes from every angle.
For the armchair pilgrim, it’s almost as good as being there. I’m
John Thavis.
And I’m Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service.
Pope: The world needs the joy that springs
from truth
01/04/2010 (1:09)
“The joy that comes from Christ gives us happiness, but it also
gives us the ability to suffer and to continue being intimately
happy even when we suffer.” This is what Benedict XVI said on
Thursday, April 1st, during the homily of the Chrism Mass, which he
presided over in St. Peter’s Basilica with 1,600 priests of the
Diocese of Rome and from the Roman universities, who afterwards
renewed their priestly promises together with the attending
cardinals and bishops.
The Pontiff then blessed the oils of the Catechumens and of the Sick
and the Holy Chrism, which will be used in the sacraments throughout
the year. “Let us pray to be capable of bringing the joy of the Holy
Spirit” Benedict XVI said to the priests, “to a world that so
urgently needs the joy that springs from truth.” The consecrated
oil, the Pope explained, “is always a sign of God’s mercy,” which we
as priests have the mission of bringing to all men and women.
Priests and all Christians, Benedict XVI said, must be people of
peace, because the Cross expresses a “no” to violence. But they must
also be prepared to suffer for good, for God. Prepared to deny all
“injustice that is elevated to a right, for example, when it is
about killing innocent unborn babies,” the Pope concluded
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Pope: Priests are messengers of hope and
peace.
31/03/2010 (1:37)
A long spiritual journey, by many gestures and meanings, which in
silence and prayer allows us to contemplate the mystery of the
Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord. To over 11 thousand
faithful gathered in St Peter's Square for the general audience,
Benedict XVI explained the ceremonies of Holy Week. First, the
Chrism Mass, during which the oils are blessed and bishops and
priests renew their priestly vows. "Be messengers of hope,
reconciliation and peace" urged the Pope, recalling the Year for
Priests currently in progress. With the Lord's Supper, the Pontiff
continued, we remember the institution of the Eucharist. "Under the
species of bread and wine, Christ is present in a real way with his
body and his blood shed as a sacrifice of the New Covenant" and at
the same time, "institutes the apostles and their successors as
ministers of this sacrament" . On Good Friday, he said, we live the
passion and death of Jesus, who "willed to offer his life in
sacrifice for the forgiveness of the sins of mankind." Holy Saturday
is marked by a great silence, which breaks with the song of the
Alleluia, during the Easter Vigil that announces the resurrection of
Christ and proclaims the victory of light over darkness, life over
death."
Benedict XVI: "I therefore urge you to live these days intensely, so
that they may decisively orient the life of all towards a generous
commitment to Christ, who died and rose for us."
Faith
in God and in the events of salvation history must necessarily
begin with a belief in God's role as Creator, says Benedict XVI.In his homily at the Easter Vigil, held tonight in St. Peter's Basilica, the Pope asked, "Is it really important to speak also of creation during the Easter Vigil? Could we not begin with the events in which God calls man, forms a people for himself and creates his history with men upon the earth?"
"The answer has to be no," he stated. "To omit the creation would be to misunderstand the very history of God with men, to diminish it, to lose sight of its true order of greatness."
"The sweep of history established by God reaches back to the origins, back to creation," the Pontiff explained. "Our profession of faith begins with the words: 'We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.' If we omit the beginning of the Credo, the whole history of salvation becomes too limited and too small."
According to the Holy Father, the central message of the creation account in Scripture was summed up best by St. John in the opening words of his Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word."
"The world is a product of the Word," Benedict XVI stated, "of the Logos, as St. John expresses it. [...] 'Logos' means 'reason,' 'sense,' 'word.' It is not reason pure and simple, but creative Reason, that speaks and communicates itself. It is Reason that both is and creates sense."
"The creation account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason," he continued. "Hence it tells us that, far from there being an absence of reason and freedom at the origin of all things, the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and freedom."
As a result, the Holy Father explained that the creation account of Scripture and St. John's Gospel affirm "that in the beginning is reason," and that mankind was not the product of random evolution "in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos."
"If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature," he said. "But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason."
The Pontiff urged the faithful to "place ourselves on the side of reason, freedom and love – on the side of God who loves us so much that he suffered for us, that from his death there might emerge a new, definitive and healed life."
The Easter revolution
Benedict XVI said that the events of Easter fundamentally changed the orientation of the week for early Church. In the Jewish tradition, the week culminates on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, the day of encounter with God, and a day of rest.
For Christians in the early Church, however, the first day of the week, Sunday, became the day to commemorate the Resurrection, the day that Christ showed himself to his disciples, and the day of the Eucharist.
"The structure of the week is overturned," the Pope noted. "No longer does it point toward the seventh day, as the time to participate in God's rest. It sets out from the first day as the day of encounter with the Risen Lord."
"This change is utterly extraordinary, considering that the Sabbath, the seventh day seen as the day of encounter with God, is so profoundly rooted in the Old Testament," the Pontiff added. "If we also bear in mind how much the movement from work towards the rest-day corresponds to a natural rhythm, the dramatic nature of this change is even more striking."
He stated that the "revolutionary development" of the early Church "can be explained only by the fact that something utterly new happened that day."
On Easter, Benedict XVI said, "the world had changed": "This man who had died was now living with a life that was no longer threatened by any death. A new form of life had been inaugurated, a new dimension of creation."
"The first day, according to the Genesis account, is the day on which creation begins," he said. "Now it was the day of creation in a new way, it had become the day of the new creation."
"We celebrate the first day," the Holy Father said. "And in so doing we celebrate God the Creator and his creation. Yes, we believe in God, the Creator of heaven and earth. And we celebrate the God who was made man, who suffered, died, was buried and rose again.
"We celebrate the definitive victory of the Creator and of his creation. We celebrate this day as the origin and the goal of our existence. We celebrate it because now, thanks to the risen Lord, it is definitively established that reason is stronger than unreason, truth stronger than lies, love stronger than death."
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Easter Gospel