Cardinal Sandri: Help Our Brothers in the Holy Land

As every year, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches has sent a letter to all bishops of the world and, through them, to all the faithful. The aim of the letter is to keep alive the awareness of our connection with the land of Jesus. It also reminds the faithful of the necessity to help our brothers in the Holy Land because they are the ones who live in the places where Jesus dwelt among us. So every year we remember these needs of our brothers and in particular the needs of the holy places, looked after by the Custody of the Holy Land. Thanks to God pilgrimages have multiplied and from them is derived a kind of consciousness from our personal relationships, almost of our Christian spirituality w …

Pope Benedict remembers sixth anniversary of Pope John Paul

Dear brothers and Sisters, yesterday was the sixth anniversary of the death of my beloved predecessor, the Pope John Paul II.

Because of his upcoming beatification, I did not celebrate the traditional Mass for the repose of his soul, but I fondly remembered him in prayer, as I think also did all of you.
“While, through our Lenten journey, we prepare for the feast of Easter, we are also joyfully approaching the day when we will venerate as Blessed this great witness of Christ and Pope and rely even more on his intercession”.

A life enlightened by Christ is free and real

“When our lives are enlightened by the mystery of Christ, we experience the joy of being liberated from all that threatens our fulfillment. ”

Those were Pope Benedict’s words on Sunday, before the recitation of the Angelus prayer from the window of his study in ‘St. Peter’s Square, in front of thousands of faithful.
He was reflecting on the Sunday Gospel which recounts the miracle of the man born without sight.
Pope Benedict explained that we too are born” blind “, but in the baptismal font we were enlightened by the grace of Christ.”
” In him we receive the strength to overcome evil and do good, because the Christian life is a continuous conformation to Christ, the image of new man.

“As …