Pope Benedict chides Canadian Bishops: rediscover centrality of the Eucharist



Vatican City, May. 11, 2006 (CNA) - In a meeting earlier today with a group of prelates from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pope Benedict XVI had strong words regarding the state of the Church in that country, stressing the need for increased devotion to the Eucharist, stronger priestly formation and greater outreach to young people.

The Holy Father began his address by chiding Canadian society, calling it marked by “pluralism, subjectivism and increasing secularization.” In this light, he said he was grateful for the visit as it allowed him the opportunity to reflect on the Church’s mission in that country.

Recalling that in 2008, Quebec will celebrate the fourth centenary of its foundation and, simultaneously host the International Eucharistic Congress, Benedict called on the city to "rediscover ... the place the Eucharist must occupy in the life of the Church."

This was a particular point of concern for the Pope who highlighted "the notable drop in religious practice over the last few years," and "the lack of young people at Eucharistic assemblies," cited in the bishop’s own reports.

Benedict told them that "The faithful must be convinced of the vital importance of regular participation in Sunday Mass, that their faith may grow and find coherent expression.”

He said in fact, that “the Eucharist, source and summit of Christian life, unites and conforms us to the Son of God. It also builds the Church, strengthening her in her unity as the Body of Christ. No Christian community can be built up if it does not have its root and its core in the celebration of the Eucharist."

The Holy Father also lamented a national drop in the number of priests "which at times”, he said, “makes it impossible to celebrate Sunday Mass in certain places,” but stressed his particular worry over “the place occupied by sacramentality in the life of the Church… The requirements of pastoral organization must not compromise authentic ecclesiology.”

He said that “The central role of the priest - who 'in persona Christi capitis, 'teaches, sanctifies and rules the community - must not be diminished."

He also expressed his gratefulness for the generous and important role of the laity, but pointed out that it “must never obscure the absolutely irreplaceable ministry of priests in the life of the Church.Consequently, priestly ministry cannot be entrusted to others without effectively prejudicing the very authenticity of the Church's being.”

“Moreover,” he asked, “how will young men want to become priests if the role of ordained ministry is not clearly defined and recognized?"

Despite these problems, the Pope affirmed that "the thirst for renewal perceptible in the faithful is a sign of hope," referring to the "positive impact"which 2002’s World Youth Day, held in Toronto, had on young Canadians.

That occasion, he said, awoke a fresh interest in Eucharistic adoration.

Benedict continued, saying that "If, as John Paul II wrote, Christianity in our time must distinguish itself above all for 'the art of prayer,' how can we not feel a renewed need to dwell in spiritual conversation ...before Christ present in the Most Holy Sacrament?"

Solid Ecclesial Communion

He then thanked Canada’s consecrated communities for the "apostolic and spiritual commitment of their members," highlighting how "consecrated life is a gift of God benefiting the entire Church and serving life in the world."

However, the Pope urged, it must take place in a context of "solid ecclesial communion," where consecrated men and women "to work ever more closely with pastors, welcoming and spreading Church doctrine in all itsintegrity."

He told the bishops that "You, as well as the whole Christian community have a primordial duty to transmit the call of the Lord fearlessly, to awaken vocations and to accompany young people along the path of discernmentand commitment, in the joy of celibacy.”

“In this spirit,” he said, “you must take care over the catechesis of children and young people.”

In closing, he likewise invited the Catholic community in Quebec “to pay renewed attention to its adherence to the truth of Church teaching on theology and morals, two inseparable aspects of being a Christian in the world."

Pope attacks gay marriage, some politicians upset
Thu May 11, 2006 09:02 AM ET

By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, speaking out on a topic that Italy's incoming centre-left government will likely have to confront, on Thursday condemned gay marriage and legal recognition of unwed couples.

The 79-year-old German Pope immediately came under fire from some leftists who accused him of trying to write the country's political agenda.

The Pope, speaking to a conference on marriage and the family, reaffirmed the Church's position that marriage had to be a union between a man and a woman and open to procreation.

"Only the rock of total and irrevocable love between a man and a woman is capable of being the foundation of building a society that becomes a home for all mankind," he said.

He told the group that marriage was between a man and a woman "who are open to the transmission of life and thus cooperate with God in the generation of new human beings."

The coalition of incoming Prime Minister Romano Prodi promises some form of recognition for unmarried couples but has stopped short of openly supporting gay marriage as part of its program.

However, some coalition parties back greater rights for homosexuals, including marriage, and the issue is widely expected to surface sooner or later after the government is sworn in next week.

Franco Grillini, a leftist parliamentarian who is openly gay, accused the Pope of trying "to write a political agenda" and of "ignoring the rights of million of Italians who live together."

Vladimir Luxuria, Europe's first "transgender" lawmaker and a member of Prodi's coalition, went further in criticizing the Pope, saying it was the duty of a lay state to "recognize and regulate" homosexual unions.

Italy's Catholic Church has already served notice to the center left that it will fight any move to recognize civil partnership for unwed heterosexual couples and gay couples.

Some in the center left support a legal recognition similar to that in France, which in 1999 granted all couples the right to form civil unions and have the right to joint social security, limited inheritance rights and other benefits.

But in his address, the Pope took direct aim at such formal recognition of couple who are not married.

"Today, it has become urgent to avoid confusion between (marriage) and other types of unions which are based on a love that is weak," he said.

Luxuria, the leftist parliamentarian, criticized the Pope for suggesting that gay love was weaker than heterosexual love.

Gay unions are already legal in several European countries, including traditionally Catholic Spain. Britain has introduced a law allowing gays to formalize their relationships.

[Modificato da benefan 11/05/2006 21.11]

Pope greets German college in Rome

May. 12 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) met on May 12 with the faculty and students of the college of Santa Maria dell'Anima, which trains German-speaking priests in Rome.

Santa Maria dell'Anima, established by Pope Innocent VII as an institution directly subject to the Roman Pontiff, is now celebrating its 600th anniversary. Pope Benedict observed that since its inception, the college has been known for its devotion to the Virgin Mary and its close ties to the papacy.

The college allows German-speaking students to "discover the grandeur and beauty of the universal Church, to live his catholicity and develop a taste for romanitas ecclesiae," the Pope said. He added that the affiliated parish, also known as Santa Maria dell'Anima, gives German residents of Rome the opportunity to receive the sacraments in their own language. The Pope encouraged the community of Santa Maria dell'Anima-- where his private secretary, Msgr. Georg Ganswein, was trained-- to continue serving as "a spiritual beacon in the Italian capital."

From Radio Polskie

Pope Benedict will meet Polish Holocaust survivors
12.05.2006

Pope Benedict XVI will meet 32 survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi German death camp during his visit to Poland at the end of this month. Those will include Poles who were among the first trainload of prisoners to arrive at the former Polish army barracks in the southern Polish city of Oswiecim, which the Germans turned into a death camp in 1940. The pope will meet the former inmates at Auschwitz's haunting execution wall, where thousands of prisoners were shot by the Nazis. Benedict's trip to Poland, the native land of his predecessor John Paul II, will begin in the capital Warsaw on May 25 and finish on May 28th.

A German pope's duty at Auschwitz

Tim Ryback International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, MAY 12, 2006

SALZBURG The Vatican recently announced that Pope Benedict XVI will visit Auschwitz on his scheduled trip to Poland later this month. This will be his second Auschwitz visit. In 1979, when Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop of Munich, he accompanied Pope John Paul II to the former Nazi death camp, where they celebrated Holy Communion.

"It was a moving idea and a moving moment to look across these horrific fields of death in which four million human beings lost their lives, and to experience the resurrection as the only true and only adequate response," he told a group of German priests afterward. There was no talk of personal remorse, no mention of German guilt. It was a singularly Catholic experience.

When Benedict attended the 60th anniversary commemoration two years ago of the D-Day landings in Normandy, he cast aside his Vatican identity to bare his German soul. The day before he appeared with Queen Elizabeth II, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and George W. Bush for the official events on the beach at Arromanches, he visited a German military cemetery at La Cambe, where 21,000 German soldiers are buried, among them several hundred former members of the notorious Waffen SS, some of whom participated in the massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane.

"As Germans we cannot help but be moved to realize that their idealism and their duty to the state was misused by an unjust government," Benedict said of the war dead at La Cambe. He expressed regret that the Germanic virtue of obedience - Pflicht - had been exploited and misused by the Nazis, and said that this did nothing to diminish their honor or service to the Fatherland.

As with Auschwitz, there was no talk of personal culpability, not a word about German guilt. "They simply tried to do their duty - even during times of terrible self-doubt, and inner conflict," he said, noting that it was not his place to judge the dead of La Cambe "into whose conscience only God can see."

Last year, when Ratzinger became the Vatican's first German pontiff in several centuries, there was much talk about "God's Rottweiler," the "Panzer Cardinal" and Ratzinger's brief stint as a German soldier and a Hitler Youth. Since then, the sniping has ceased. Benedict XVI has shown himself to be a pontiff who embraces the global community of Roman Catholics, transcending national identity and political borders with his eloquence, intelligence and compassion. He set the tone for his papacy earlier this year with the opening words of his first encyclical letter: "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him"

Later this month, however, when Benedict XVI returns to Auschwitz, a quarter century after his last visit, he will arrive not only as the leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics, but also as the most prominent moral spokesman for 80 million Germans. It will be an opportunity rich in symbolic and moral potential: a former Hitler Youth passing through the gates of a former Nazi death camp as one of the world's leading spiritual authorities.

One hopes that Benedict will use this moment the way, for example, that Chancellor Willy Brandt did in 1970 when he fell to his knees, speechless with remorse, before the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, or the way President Richard von Weizsäcker did in 1985 when he marked the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II with a landmark speech about the Germans' collective responsibility to their past. "All of us, whether guilty or innocent, whether young or old, must accept the past," Weizsäcker said. "We are all affected by its consequences and are liable for it."

Let's hope Benedict XVI brings his full moral authority, his eloquence and his insight, to help us better understand the historical and moral responsibilities of the German people 60 years after the Holocaust. If he was able to speak as a German to the dead Waffen SS soldiers in La Cambe two years ago, let's hope he can do the same for Germany's victims at Auschwitz this spring.

Timothy W. Ryback codirects the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation at the Salzburg Seminar.

200,000 expected at Pentecost-eve vigil for lay movements

May. 12 (CWNews.com) - More than 200,000 people are expected to attend a special prayer service, on the eve of Pentecost Sunday, at which Pope Benedict XVI will meet with members of new lay movements.

Pope Benedict has invited members of new ecclesial communities to join him for Vespers on June 3. Organizers at the Pontifical Council for the Laity say that although exact figures are impossible to provide, they expect an enormous crowd in St. Peter's Square.

Guzman Carriquiry, the under-secretary of the Pontifical Council, reports that leaders of the NeoCatechumenate expect up to 80,000 members to attend the event, while Communion and Liberation expected 30,000, Focolari 20,000, and the St. Egidio community another 10,000.

Dozens of lay movements are involved in planning for the Pentecost vigil, and while the majority of those attending will no doubt be Italian, there will be other participants drawn from all over the world, Guzman says. Young people will dominate the crowd.

The vigil is intended primarily as a time of common prayer, rather than as a spectacle, according to the wishes of the Holy Father. The event will begin at 4 in the afternoon, with the Pope arriving at 5:30, Vespers scheduled for 6, and the event expected to conclude at 8.

The prayer service with Pope Benedict will be preceded by a congress for lay movements, May 31- June 2, held just outside Rome at Rocca di Papa. More than 300 participants are expected for that event, which will be addressed by Cardinals Christoph Schönborn, Marc Ouellet, and Angelo Scola.

As that earlier meeting ends, the different lay movements will hold their own meetings in the basilicas of Rome on June 2. Each group, following its own charisms and practices, will hold a service of prayer and catechesis to prepare for the Pentecost vigil.

Pope continues attack on gay marriage

May 14, 2006 - 6:04AM
The Age

Pope Benedict renewed his attack on gay marriage, saying Christians must defend traditional heterosexual marriage as a "pillar of humanity" benefiting both believers and non-believers.

Calling on the faithful to stand up for traditional notions of marriage and procreation in the face of moves to recognise gay marriage, he said: "Such a witness can only stimulate politicians and legislators to safeguard the rights of the family.

"It's well known that legal solutions like so-called 'civil unions' are gaining ever greater acceptance, even if, while they exclude the responsibilities of marriage, they claim the same rights," he said in a speech to the Pontifical Council for the Family.

"Sometimes, there is the wish even to change the definition of marriage to legalise homosexual unions, granting them the right to adopt children."

The comments are stronger than remarks Benedict made two days ago that were criticised by some members of Italy's incoming centre-left government as unwanted interference in a political issue.

"The church's interventions (on gay couples) are now becoming daily and really do represent a crusade on parliament and lawmakers, aimed at blocking any discussion of the rights of new couples," said Franco Grillini, a member of parliament of the Democrats of the Left and honorary chairman of Italy's gay rights movement Arcigay.

Centre-left leader Romano Prodi, who is due to be appointed prime minister next week, included in his election manifesto a promise to legally recognise civil unions, stopping short of introducing gay marriage and not allowing same-sex couples to adopt.

But his coalition is split on the issue, with some wanting greater rights for gay couples and some opposed to the move.

"In parliament there's a cross-party majority to stop this secular attack on the institution of family based on marriage between man and woman," said Clemente Mastella, leader of the UDEUR, a small Christian Democrat group in Prodi's coalition.

Gay unions are already legal in several European countries, including traditionally Catholic Spain.

I would normally have posted this item in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH, but since benefan posted a related item above while I was translating this item from ZENIT'S Italian service, it complements the above story. I translated the Pope's address referred to in Benefan's post in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES.

[I still don't understand how ZENIT's various language services work. Most of the time, it seems like they don't talk to each other at all, nor even care to check what stories each service carries. When I saw this in the Italian service, datelined Madrid, I went to the Spanish service to get the 'original' story, but nope! they didn't have it at all! Go figure...]
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The Executive Committee of the Spanish Episcopal Conference published Friday a note which denounces the fact that the European Parliament has effectively given equal value to matrimony and homosexual unions.

Other European bishops conferences previously expressed dissent to a resolution “on homophobia in Europe” passed by the Parliament on January 18, 2006.

The Spanish note first says that the bishops join in “condemning so-called homophobia, rightfully denouncing attitudes of discrimination, contempt and violence against persons with homosexual tendencies.”

At the same time, however, the Spanish bishops sound an alarm over the appeal by the European Parliament to “the governments of the member nations of the European Union to review their existing legislation about same-sex couples.”

“This resolution, with the pretext of avoiding discrimination against homosexuals, indirectly launches the idea that unions between a man and a woman and unions between members of the same sex should be treated in the same way.

“This misrepresents the truth based on the nature of the human being, who was created as man and woman. As a consequence, the Resolution represents a serious danger for marital and family life and for the entire order of social life in Europe.”

The note adds: “Even if the Resolution does not oblige the member countries, it could represent moral pressure on them.”

“Forgetting the principle of subsidiarity, which should be a norm for correct functioning of the institutions of the European Union, the Resolution would impose on the citizens of the Union a concept of anthropological truth which is contrary to the values and principles of our civilization.

“The proposal to utilize educational methods to combat ‘homophobia’ carries with it the grave danger of introducing this deformation of truth to children and young people, with a negative effect on the formation of consciences.”

The Spanish bishops had previously expressed themselves opposed to the “most grave legal dispositions adopted in our country” which recognize “homosexual marriages” as well as allow homosexuals to adopt children.

“These are measures,” they said, which “presuppose a redefinition of matrimony and empty this institution of its most elementary content.”

The note concludes:
“We unite ourselves with the other Episcopal Conferences in Europe and to many citizens who have expressed their protest against this Resolution which strikes at the correct functioning of the European Union and against the conscience of its citizens.

“At the same time, we appeal to the European Parliament to avoid future actions that would jeopardize the freedom of conscience in the European Union."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/05/2006 15.49]

Ratzi.lella posted this item from today's issue of Il Messaggero, a Rome-based newspaper, in the main forum. The report, unfortunately is quite sketchy and unsatisfactory, and one hopes that the papers or lectures given at the conference will be published soon on an accessible site, so we can get a fuller picture . Here is a translation --------------------------------------------------------------

Papa Ratzinger: Weaver of truths

The Pope as weaver of truths and adversary of weak thinking. This is the portrait that emerged yesterday at what was probably the first-ever conference in Italy dedicated to the thought, theology and faith of Benedict XVI.

Held at the Rectory in the morning and later at the audiovisual hall of the Mediatheque in Rome, the conference allowed the public to dialog with bishops, theologians and journalists knowledgeable in the field. All came to examine the various aspects of the work that has been carried out by the world’s most famous theologian.

“Ratzinger states that the Second Vatican Council did not represent any break with preceding tradition which consists of incontrovertible truths,” said the journalist Giuseppe Poseidoni of the Center for Oriental and Occidental Studies which organized the conference. “But there are other theologians who claim it was a break with the past, being an ‘opening to the world.’”

Orazio Petrosillo, vertyeran Vatican correspondent for the newspaper Il Messaggero, spoke on relativism according to Joseph Ratzinger: “For Ratzinger, relativism is the fundamental enemy of life and of faith, because it expresses weak thinking and poor reasoning. Not only that, relativism also masks the intention to marginalize all thought that is non-relativistic, in effect, marginalizing God from society.”

Petrosillo said that in Cologne, the Pope challenged the youth with five theses on relativism, among them: “If man chases God away, he loses his humanity. All totalitarianisms chase God away.”

Among the moderators, Luigi Negri, archbishop of San Marino, recalled that “the legacy of Vatican-II united the last two Popes inn their firmness about doctrine and divine mercy.”

The conclusions of the conference were summarized by Fr. Jesus Castellano Cervera, professor of theology at a Rome university and a consultant at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“Joseph Ratzinger never forgets the charismatic impulse by great women in the Church like Teresa of Avila and St. Clare and many others who expressed themselves best in the orders they established in every time and age.”

He went on to speak about the dangers of “unilateralism, the absolutization of charism [Editor's note: when in fact, evangelic reality can be lived in many different ways] and tensions at the local level, which require mutual undertanding to deal with.”

Hello Teresa,

I hope you read this: I have the Interview published in Süddeutsche Zeitung yesterday. However, since I am not yet a member, I would have to post it in this section, due to failing to access the other sections.

I could also provide a translation into English, so you would not have to do this.

Just say a word and I'll get down to work

Andrea M.

ANDREA - Please go ahead and provide a full translation. As I explained in the German section, I cannot access the article online as it is available only for subscribers. I registered in the hope that I could purchase an article at a time as Frankfuerter Allgemeine Zeitung allows, but SD requires at least a monthly subscription.

I think you can post in any thread except Private Room, but if you can't get into PEOPLE AROUND THE POPE, then here is fine! Georg talks mostly about the Pope anyway, according to the blurb.

BTW, what's keeping you from registering fully in the forum? We would love to have you as a regular!

P.S. Please go to the CHATTER thread for more info about registration - I will post a message there for you.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/05/2006 22.49]

Hello everyone!

I have just started the translation of the article, but I need a little more time. I think, I will not be able to post it until tomorrow. But anyway the translation is under way ...

BTW, the reason why I am not yet a member is that I cannot fully understand the instructions for becoming a member ... I would love to become a member ...

Andrea M.

Cardinal Dulles on Benedict's views of Vatican II

Last Oct., Cardinal Avery Dulles gave a lecture at Fordham University in New York about Joseph Ratzinger's involvement in Vatican II and his subsequent views on the results of the Council. Cardinal Dulles is an eminent American theologian and writer. His speech and a question and answer session appear on a video in the following link. Look on the right side of the page about halfway down.

www.fordhamfrc.org/videos.shtml

Hello everyone!

As promissed here is an English translation of the Interview with Georg Ratzinger in Süddeutsche Zeitung:

“He leads a relatively orderly life”

My brother the Pope

Georg Ratzinger on Benedict XVI., daily life in the Vatican and Psalters on the “home exercise machine”

SZ: Mr. Ratzinger, would you disclose to us, what you pray for?
Ratzinger: I would have liked not to be asked that privately. First of all, anyone prays for his own matters of concern, for health, for the relatives, the brother, but also for general purposes, concerning Church and State. Everything that causes concern, that’s what you pray for. But praying does not only consist in Begging, but also thanking.

What has changed in the year, since your brother became Pope?
Primarily, that he does no longer come for a visit. Formerly he used to come four times a year. A priest or a bishop is never fully a private citizen, due to his rank and prestige, he always is on duty. But as far as the daily routine was concerned, privacy was mainly given. How he certainly does not come anymore.

Recently, when you were admitted to hospital, the news was given to every press agency.
People in the hospital thought that in order to avoid rumours it would be better to make the news public. So it was featured even in the smallest newspaper (Dorfblattl). This time I was admitted for four days, because I had water between the lung and the pleura and also in the legs, this was put out beautifully. Since then I feel fine.

Then apart from the problem with the eyesight, there are no further problems regarding your health situation?
I have to be a bit careful with the heart. I have a pacemaker. But all of this is not that tragic. I exercise regularly on my home excercise-bycicle upstairs. Mostly I do it for only the length of a short Psalter. Anyway, I take rarely longer than [the recital of] a rosary and I do it always after lunch.

In April last year you were worried about your brother’s health.
Yes, but he makes a fresh impression. In former times, I always used to be the healthier person of both of us. He is reasonable he sees to it that he keeps in motion. With both his secretaries he goes for a walk and when walking they pray the rosary. And in the evenings he finishes his work relatively early. At 7 p.m. the audiences are over, then he prays the breviary, at 7.30 p.m. they have dinner, at 8 p.m. they watch the Italian newscast and after that they go for another walk. Then he prays the rest of breviary and goes to sleep. In the evenings, he cannot work anymore he just gets nothing together then. Insofar he leads a fairly orderly live and looks after / sees to his forces.

Does it bother you that you are always asked about your brother?
Well, personally I am not so interesting. What is interesting about me is my brother. This does not bother me. Just when people call and want something from my brother, or that I should arrange something with my brother, then I am annoyed. This happens very often.

What do these people want?
Generally, that I hand over letters or they want me to make private audiences possible. For reasons of experience, I do not respond to these wishes.

Have you alienated yourself from your brother, since he is Pope?
No. We are on the phone every week. Most of the time he calls me, because I am the one who is more easily reachable. With the help of a friend, I had a special telephone installed. When that rings, I know that my brother is on the line.

In these phone calls, is there any theological exchange?
Our conversations are not that long. We talk more about our personal things – what we have experienced, how we are doing, what the weather is like. It is more day to day things.

Do you talk about his clothing, the red shoes, the Kamauro?
I did ask him about the Kamauro. He said: Mei, I put it on because of the cold. Or some people have noticed he had new glasses then I ask him about it. He himself does not say anything as far as that is concerned. Regarding appearances, my brother does not talk it.

Could you please describe to us, what it is like when you visit him in Rome?
The Papal Family consists of the Pope, both the secretaries and the four Memores (sisters). It is with them that I take in the meals. My room is on the 5th floor, the papal rooms are on the 4th floor. Since, due to my problems with the eyesight, I am no longer able to read myself, I have someone who reads to me in the morning and in the afternoon.

What is it that you have yourself read?
What I choose to. The last ting we had was Golo Mann’s “History of the 19th century”. This book we already started when my brother still used to come to Regensburg for a visit. It is a rather thick book, very interesting. Or I have them read a book by an evangelical theologian on subjects regarding the Old Testament.
In the meantime, when nobody reads me anything, that’s when I listen to CD’s. At home I have reading devices; in Rome I do not have them that is why there I am relying on people reading me something or listening to CD’s. Otherwise on a mental level, I would feel empty.

Do you celebrate Mass?
In the house chapel. My brother is the main celebrant and both the secretaries and I are the concelebrants. That’s very nice.

Did you ever consider moving to Rome?
No. This is something that at my age I won’t do. Here I have my beautiful apartment and I am known to people here. And the time I spent in the Vatican with my brother is not that long either. If I was there forever, I would consider myself a burden.

When did Joseph Ratzinger stop to be your younger brother?
That was through even before the war, in puberty. I never wanted to have the prerogative. I was not vain about something and my brother also was not. We were already like that as children. Everyone had his own thing and was treated in the same way by the parents. We have never had anything against each other.

Would you become a priest again today, if you were 20 or 25 years of age?
No doubt. I say yes to my decision to become a priest without hesitation rückhaltlos. Apart from that, God could not have given me anything better than Church music at the Regensburg Dom with the Regensburg Domspatzen. But I would have been ready to fulfil my service in other fields, such as being a pastor in a parish, or a pastor in a prison or a pastor in the Military. But the loving God did a good thing.

Did you ever feel lonely?
At the beginning of my time as Domkapellmeister in Regensburg, I was happy to have my siblings around. It was not easy, to come to this post as a young musician and be accepted straight away a hundred per cent by the old guard. But apart from that, I never had a bad time in my life. When you are surrounded by young people the whole day long it so happens that you are happy to be alone in the evening.

No Midlife Crisis?
No. I believe that for this we were much too sober. I will tell you what for someone like me posed a problem: Once a priest in pension resided in the apartment underneath and I was only allowed to rehearse and play the piano until 10 p.m. When at 10.05 p.m. I was still rehearsing his cook was bumping with the broomstick against the ceiling. These were our problems. But I am happy for every day that is behind me. I would not like to be young today.

Pope-Beer, a Pope-Teddy bear, a Pope-song – this reminds one of the cult regarding a leader in the Antique, don’t you think?
It looks like a cult surrounding a person und up to a certain degree it certainly is. But on the other hand, people would like to see a new trade-mark that is making an impact. It is all about commerce. It is not ideal. But when poor people make a little money in this way, in God’s Name, so be it. I am not grudging somebody something. But with those who do not really need it, it is more misuse.

You are not saying you are not a Conservative. And you also have sympathies for CSU [Edmund Stoibers political party]?
Yes. But I also have reservations regarding the CSU. Donum Vitae for example is subsidized while Caritas is not. They pretend as if Donum Vitae was the consultation forum of the Church, which is not the case. It is by means of Donum Vitae that something is made possible that the Church would like to avoid – legal abortion – because they issue these certificates of consultation and thus access to legal abortion.

But anyway you keep tending towards CSU?
Yes. But there are couple of good Social Democrats (Sozis), but with the SPD you can still see the eggshells of Marx.

Which Pope do you most admire?
I admire Leo the Great because of his texts that are proof of a great theological depth. Leo went to meet with Attila, the king of the Huns in full ornate. He has forced him to turn back.

Interview: Rudolf Neumeier

© Süddeutsche Zeitung

If anyone of you, primarily those with English as their mother tongue, has any suggestions on how to make certain things in my translation clearer, do not hestitate to modify.

[Modificato da @Andrea M.@ 15/05/2006 14.23]

[Modificato da @Andrea M.@ 15/05/2006 14.24]

Benedict the abbot? – Pope’s focus on community, freedom in Christ

By Christopher Ruddy
5/14/2006
America Magazine

NEW YORK (America) - When Joseph Ratzinger chose Benedict XVI as his papal name, commentators quickly and correctly pointed out its significance. And in the year since his election, the new pope’s actions have borne out many of those expectations.

His warm meeting and dinner last September with Hans Küng – the embodiment of Catholic theological dissent – gave hope that like Pope Benedict XV, he would be a peacemaker in the church, helping to end years of internal strife. And like St. Benedict of Nursia, the pope has worked to foster a Christian culture capable of renewing church and world in an age of daunting threats. Deus Caritas Est, his first encyclical, is nothing other than an attempt to show to a skeptical modernity that God is not the enemy of human flourishing, but its very possibility and fulfillment.

Despite such telling hints, it is still too early to discern fully the shape of his pontificate. Benedict has shown himself fully committed to Christian unity, especially with the Orthodox and Eastern churches, but this sense of promise is still at its beginning. The long-term effects of the Congregation for Catholic Education’s instruction on the admission to seminaries of men with homosexual tendencies, which has been contentiously received in the church, remain unclear.

Similarly, Benedict’s anticipated restructuring of the Roman Curia has yet to occur in full, while his episcopal appointments to date give little overt indication of his vision for church leadership. One awaits his replacements for upcoming retirements in such major American sees as Washington, D.C., and Detroit, as well as in Italy and Germany. In these and other ways, his tenure so far has been, to the surprise of some and the unease of others, dramatically undramatic.

And yet, if his pontificate remains embryonic, a clear portrait of the man has begun to emerge: Pope Benedict the abbot. If John Paul II was above all a witness, carrying the truth about Christ and humanity to all peoples and places, I suggest that Benedict can be summed up as an abbot concerned with leading his community to a deeper encounter with God through prayer and service. Where John Paul was a “sender,” concerned primarily with the church’s mission, Benedict is a “gatherer,” concerned primarily with its communion.

Certainly the former pope had an unparalleled gift for bringing people together, and the present one has stressed that the church is inherently missionary. (In fact, working closely with Yves Congar, OP, he drafted the first, foundational chapter of Vatican II’s “Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church.”) If communion and mission are inseparable – the diastole and systole of the church’s heartbeat – it nonetheless remains that the two popes emphasize complementary aspects of the church’s life.

In one sense, the image of Pope Benedict XVI as abbot should not be surprising, as both titles, pope and abbot, mean father. And the pope’s admiration for St. Benedict and the Benedictines is well known.

On a deeper level, though, the Rule of St. Benedict tells us much about the pope’s vision of the church and of his ministry in it. Benedictine spirituality is perhaps the least spectacular of Catholic spiritualities. Where the Ignatian, for example, seeks the greater glory of God as a companion in Christ’s mission, and the Franciscan a radical identification with the poor and crucified Christ, the Benedictine encounters Christ above all in the routine of daily life. Rarely dramatic, it is a deep life, grounded in steady, prayerful attentiveness to God and in hospitable community.

The monastery, as the Rule famously describes it, is to be a “school for the Lord’s service”: “In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. Do not be daunted by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. “This entwining of moderation and zeal finds its complement in the Rule’s depiction of the abbot, who “holds the place of Christ in the monastery.” He is, literally, the vicar of Christ. Acting with discretion, the “mother” of all virtues, “he must so arrange everything that the strong have something to yearn for and the weak nothing to run from.”

I do not know whether Pope Benedict has consciously shaped his ministry in light of the Rule’s vision of the monastery and its abbot, though I suspect he has, but I suggest three areas in which that heritage helps make sense of his pontificate: love for the person of Christ, leadership as listening and his interpretation of Vatican II as an experience of renewal in continuity with the past.

Love for the person of Christ

The Rule calls the monks to “prefer nothing whatever to Christ,” a phrase that Pope Benedict quoted in his very first general audience. The key to his pontificate, indeed to his life, is found in this personalism. As both a theologian and a bishop, he has warned against a reduction of Christianity to morality, social activism or an intellectual system. The kingdom of God, he said in a homily delivered in February at St. Anne’s Parish in the Vatican, is not a program, but the presence of God, above all in the person of Christ.

Jesus is defined by his prayerful encounter with the father, and we in turn are defined by our encounter with Jesus, who “takes us by the hand” in the gift of his word and sacraments and thereby shares his life with us. Thus, as the pope said in a weekly audience in February, Jesus’ disciples are called not to be “heralds of an idea, but witnesses of a person. Before being sent to evangelize, they would have to ‘be’ with Jesus (cf. Mk 3:14), establishing a personal relationship with him.”

The pope is calling us to encounter Christ anew in the quiet of prayer, in the risk of personal encounter, so as to give ourselves fully to the “one who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20, one of his favorite scripture passages). The church, like a Benedictine “school for the Lord’s service,” is where one comes to know and love Christ in the liturgy, in the prayerful reading of scripture (lectio divina), in the ordinary, daily work of our lives. Its contemplation allows for a deeper, more expansive engagement with the world.

This call to communion with Christ helps account for his emphasis – at World Youth Day, at last October’s meeting of the World Synod of Bishops and in his homilies and addresses – on adoration and worship. Far from being a privatized, ethereal devotion, as some fear, adoration is a basic posture in life, an invitation to fall in love with Christ and to let that love bear fruit in everything that one does. One gazes at Christ like a parent at a newborn child or newlyweds at each other: delighting in the beloved’s presence, being still and often silent with each other, kneeling in gratitude and awe. Adoration must surely give rise to the service of neighbor, but that service will founder if it loses a sense of wonder before the one who loves us first.

Thus, as Benedict reminded his congregation on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Eucharist gathers the church in adoration, while sending it in “procession above and beyond the walls of our churches. In this sacrament, the Lord is always journeying to meet the world.” Communion issues forth in mission and that mission, as Vatican II put it, finds its “source and summit” in the Eucharist, in the worship of God and the sanctification of humanity. The goal, as the Rule says simply, is “that in all things God may be glorified.” “Without adoration,” Benedict said some years before his election, “there is no transformation of the world.”

Leadership as listening

If Christ is the substance of Benedict’s pontificate, listening is its style. The first word of the Benedictine rule is “Listen,” and as the pope said in his installation homily, “My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole church, to the word and the will of the Lord.”

The Rule extends this call in a specific way to the abbot, who is to listen first to Christ, but also to the entire community, even – or especially – to its most junior members, “for the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger.” The abbot, like all monks, must listen with “the ear of the heart,” with his deepest being, to all through whom God speaks. It is telling, as John Allen reports in The Rise of Benedict XVI, that during the papal interregnum several cardinals felt that then-Cardinal Ratzinger heard them with a depth and familiarity that surpassed that of his predecessor.

While still a cardinal, the pope commended in the book-length interview published as God and the World the centrality of listening in Benedictine life. And as pope he has continued this emphasis in his reflections on the papal office. Last May, on taking possession of the chair of the bishop of Rome – the sign of his teaching authority – he said that the pope is “not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: the pope’s ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his word. He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the church to obedience to God’s word.” Obedience, it should be recalled, means “listening.”

This intentional emphasis on listening has profound implications for the church and the world. Writing on the papal transition in The Atlantic (January/February 2006), Paul Elie lamented what he saw as the growing gap between the papacy’s increasing power within the church and its increasing irrelevance in the world. Pope Benedict, he wrote, was likely not only not to reverse this trend, but to accelerate it through his doctrinal fixity and attention to internal church matters. Perhaps, Elie suggested, the time was ripe “to turn away from the question of what the pope believes and consider just what it is that we believe.”

This, however, is exactly what Benedict is doing as pope. Lost in the media frenzy over his criticism of the “dictatorship of relativism” in his homily on the morning of the conclave’s opening was his call for an adult faith rooted in friendship with Christ. Only such maturity, he noted, can keep the believer from being blown about by ideologies and fads of every sort.

Benedict appears determined that Catholics and others listen to Christ, not to himself. While mindful of his divinely willed ministry in the church, he seems intent on self-effacement, eschewing bold gestures and quietly focusing instead on the essentials – Christ, scripture, the sacraments, service. Such foundations alone allow for a true maturity and depth in faith.

Interpretation of Vatican II

As the oldest religious order in the Western church, the Benedictines demonstrate that rootedness in the past makes possible the truest creativity. Their monasteries kept alive Western culture through centuries of dissolution, and, to borrow the title of the Benedictine Jean Leclerq’s book, have shown that the love of learning and the desire for God bring each other to completion.

Monks, like Lambert Beauduin and Odo Casel, likewise helped pioneer the liturgical renewal that was confirmed at Vatican II. These Benedictines exemplified the dual movement of ressourcement (return to the often-neglected sources of tradition) and aggiornamento (updating in light of the signs of the times) that powered the council: reaching back to move forward.

The ongoing debate over the proper interpretation of Vatican II was at the heart of Benedict’s year-end address to the Roman Curia, which serves as a kind of papal State of the Union. He identified two main currents of interpretation: the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” and the “hermeneutic of reform.” The first school holds that “the texts of the council as such do not yet address the true spirit of the council,” since they are marked by compromises that “ke[pt] and reconfirm[ed] many old things that are now pointless.” The hermeneutics of reform, in contrast, affirms that only an emphasis on continuity of principles will bear fruit in true church renewal; real reform consists in applying unchanging principles to changing historical situations.

Although the pope’s strong emphasis in his address on the council’s continuity with previous church teachings – especially on religious freedom – was likely directed in part at reconciliation with followers of the late, excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, he may have overstated his case. The church historian John O’Malley, SJ, writing in America (issue of 2/24/2003) and elsewhere, has argued, simply and convincingly, that the council did not spend enormous sums of time and money and did not write hundreds of pages of documents simply to say, “business as usual.”

The council, while remaining in assured continuity with centuries of tradition, nonetheless articulated in its very texts a new rhetorical “style” that expressed a decidedly different way of being church. But if Benedict’s depiction of the two competing hermeneutics needs to take fuller account of this genuinely discontinuous dimension of the council, he is nonetheless right that any such development can be properly understood only from within a broader matrix of continuity. Aggiornamento and ressourcement need each other.

A year into his pontificate, Benedict still worries some and angers others, who hear in him a repressive, even dehumanizing, voice on theological, cultural and sexual matters. It would be a tragedy for all, though, were such fears and criticisms to crowd out the invitation that he is offering – calmly and insistently – to Catholics and to all people: to see in Christ not the destruction of our happiness and freedom, but their only fullness.

Among the Benedictine Rule’s first lines are, “What, dear brothers, is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us? See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life.” In the gentleness of his person and the quiet joy of his words, this pope-abbot is showing that we ignore that call to our own sadness. - - -

Christopher Ruddy, assistant professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., is the author of The Local Church: Tillard and the Future of Catholic Ecclesiology (Herder & Herder).

Pope Benedict XVI calls for reciprocity with Islam

May 15, 2006, 14:32 GMT
M&C News, UK

Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI on Monday called on Islamic countries to safeguard Catholics living there and on both Muslims and Catholics to show 'mutual respect' towards each other.

Addressing a Vatican conference on immigration to and from the Islamic world, Benedict said the Roman Catholic Church was 'committed' to interreligious dialogue.

'We are living at a time in which Christians are called to nurture an open style of dialogue on religious issues,' Benedict said.

At the same time, 'we are increasingly aware of the importance of reciprocity' - a term used to indicate the need for Islamic countries to allow their Christian minorities to build churches and live their faith just as Muslims are allowed to frequent mosques existing in predominantly Christian nations like Italy.

The 79-year-old pontiff has made inter-religious dialogue one of the priorities of his pontificate, meeting Islamic leaders during his first trip to Germany and openly condemning the Mohammed cartoons published in the Danish media.

From Polskie Radio

Poles ready to give German Pope a ‘positive reception’
15.05.2006
Report by Michal Kubicki

Fifteen percent of Poles are planning to attend religious services of Pope Benedict XVI and around 50 percent of them are to follow the media coverage of next week’s visit.

According to a public opinion survey on the eve of the pilgrimage, the election of a German cardinal as Pope John Paul II’s successor has made a positive impact on Polish-German relations.

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Warsaw on May 25 and after two days in the capital will travel to the Madonna shrine at Czestochowa, the late pope’s birthplace of Wadowice, the city of Krakow and the site of the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz.

According to a survey by Mareco Polska, a member of Gallup International Association, 30 percent of Poles think that the German Pope has made a positive impact on the consolidation of good-neighbourly relations with Germany.

Father Manfred Deselaers is a German priest who’s been living in Oswiecim, close to the site of the Auschwitz camp, for many years.

‘I’m deeply moved by the very positive attitude and reception of Pope Benedict. I got many congratulations from Poland, more than from Germany, after his election as pope. I feel that for many Poles he’s a great sign of hope for the healing of Polish-German relations and many people feel this is a sign of Providence that after the Polish pope comes the German pope, a friend of the Polish pope who continues his mission and by this re-unites the two nations’.

Around 75 percent of Poles appreciate the fact that pope Benedict is doing his best to address Polish pilgrims in their native language.

He has made 96 brief addresses in Polish since the beginning of his pontificate. Father Manfred Deselaers sees this as an important factor.

‘It’s a human touch. He’s very humble. I know that he loves Poland; he’s been here several times, in his early years, still as a professor he was already engaged in Polish-German relations’.

Polish observers agree that the pope’s visit to Auschwitz is likely to prove another important step on the road to a full reconciliation between Polish and German nations. On the religious level, the forthcoming trip will be an important test for Polish Catholics. A prominent writer on religious affairs Jonathan Luxmoore predicts that even though Benedict XVI is a popular figure here, the atmosphere of the visit will be different from that of the pilgrimages of the Polish pope.

‘He can certainly expect to attract very considerable crowds. Whether they will be of the order of John Paul II remains to be seen. The visit will have I think a different atmosphere. Benedict XVI will come to a country which is still, in a sense, in mourning and although he is regarded by Poles as the next best thing after John Paul II he’s clearly someone with quite a different stature and meaning for Poles. There will be a great effort made to encourage people to think of him as a pope for Poland as much as John Paul II himself was’.

The trip to Poland is the first journey abroad carried out at the request of Pope Benedict XVI.

George Weigel on Benedict XVI's Poland Trip

WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 15, 2006 (Zenit.org).- George Weigel has spent ample time in Poland, researching his famous biography on Pope John Paul II and leading seminars for students.

Recently, Weigel was the second non-Pole to receive the Gloria Artis Gold Medal, Poland's highest honor in recognition of contributions to Polish and world culture.

ZENIT turned to Weigel, a senior fellow who holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, to glean the significance of Benedict XVI's forthcoming trip to John Paul II's homeland.

Pope Benedict XVI has not traveled extensively in his first year. Why do you think he has accepted an invitation to Poland?
Pope Benedict is traveling as much as he thinks appropriate, given his age and his other commitments.

As for why he accepted an invitation to come to Poland, I expect that he wants to thank the Polish people for the gift of John Paul the Great -- and he may want to challenge Poland to take a leading role in the re-evangelization of Europe.

What is the significance of the Pope traveling to places that were very important in Pope John Paul II's life, such as his birthplace in Wadowice and the shrine at Kalwaria?
For Benedict to visit John Paul's hometown, Wadowice, as well as Kalwaria and Czestochowa, is a way to recognize, by way of his own pilgrimage, that the late Pope learned lessons in these places that were important for the entire world Church -- and still are today.

What role do you think Benedict XVI believes Poland plays in European affairs?
The Pope surely recognizes that Poland -- in addition to its stable democracy and its growing economy -- is home to an intact Catholic culture, at a time when the faith is dying in Europe and Europe is dying in part because of that.

I suspect that the Pope hopes that Poland's faith will help re-energize Catholic faith throughout "Old Europe," and that Poland will help resist the drift in the European Union toward imposed lifestyle libertinism -- what the Pope referred to the day before his election as the "dictatorship of relativism."

What is the state of the Church in Poland? What are the challenges to the Church from prosperity and Western secularized culture?
Many observers predicted a Polish Catholic meltdown -- similar to the meltdowns in Spain, Portugal and Ireland -- after the Revolution of 1989.

That hasn't happened. Polish Catholic practice remains intense, certainly the most intense in Europe.

As for challenges in the Polish Church, most thoughtful Polish Catholics I know believe the country needs a new injection of dynamic episcopal leadership if the Church is going to seize the culture-forming opportunities that lie before it.

Do you expect the very high level of vocations to the priesthood to continue in Poland?
Yes, at least for the immediate future.

Pope Benedict practices Polish ahead of trip
Tue May 16, 2006 11:23 AM ET

WARSAW (Reuters) - German-born Pope Benedict is brushing up on his Polish ahead of a trip to his predecessor's native country later this month, organizers said on Tuesday.

Benedict will be in Poland from May 25 to 28, visiting the biggest Nazi German death camp complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau as well as sites associated with the late John Paul, including his home town of Wadowice and Krakow.

"The Pope did not waver for a moment about visiting Poland and is learning Polish, showing his love for our country and for John Paul," said Father Robert Nencek, aide to Krakow Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz.

Officials say the Pope, known to speak German, French, English, Italian and Spanish, is practicing pronunciation of consonant-heavy Polish words to soften a hard German accent heard when he reads phonetically written speeches in Polish.

Benedict will start masses in Polish and later switch to Italian before handing over the reading to local clergy, who will continue the sermon in Polish. Part of the liturgy will be carried out in Latin and he will pray in German at Auschwitz.

Some Jewish groups have objected to him speaking at length in German at the camp, Polish Arch-Bishop Stanislaw Gadecki -- responsible for the Auschwitz part of the trip -- told daily Gazeta Wyborcza. The Pope will also make a speech there in Italian, the Vatican's international language.

Benedict served briefly in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when membership in the paramilitary organization was compulsory. He has said the brutality of the Nazi regime in Germany helped him to become a priest after the war.

About 2 million Poles are expected to attend his two public masses, with the faithful set to receive special booklets with translations into Polish.

Pope schedules meeting with #2 Russian prelate

May. 17 (CWNews.com) - Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk, the chief foreign-affairs official of the Moscow patriarchate, will meet Pope Benedict XVI in a private audience on May 18.

Metropolitan Kirill will be in Rome for a 2-day visit, highlighted by the blessing of the first Russian Orthodox parish church in the Eternal City, located on the grounds of the Russian embassy. Although that visit had been previously announced, news of his meeting with the Pontiff was delayed-- apparently by last-minute negotiations over details of the papal audience.

German-born Pope Benedict’s visit to Poland will be pastoral, personal

By Cindy Wooden
5/17/2006
Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)

VATICAN CITY – The memory of Pope John Paul II will be present throughout Pope Benedict XVI's May 25-28 trip to Poland, but the German-born pope's pastoral visit also will focus on his own background.

Pope Benedict will visit Pope John Paul's birthplace and will celebrate Mass in Krakow, where his predecessor was ordained to the priesthood and served as archbishop.

The new pope also will visit Marian shrines dear to the heart of his predecessor and likely will hear pleas to beatify Pope John Paul quickly. At the same time, he will encourage Poles to keep Pope John Paul's memory alive by living the faith as the late pontiff would want them to do.

Pope Benedict approved the theme chosen by the Polish bishops for the visit, "Be Strong in the Faith."

But internationally, the key moment of Pope Benedict's four-day trip will be his May 28 visit to the Nazi's Auschwitz death camp and his prayer service at the nearby site of the Birkenau concentration camp.

Born in Bavaria in 1927, Pope Benedict grew up in Germany during the Nazis' rise to power and witnessed their expanding grip over other peoples and nations, starting with Poland.

While he was a seminarian, school officials enrolled him in the Hitler Youth program, although he soon stopped going to meetings.

He was drafted into the German army in 1943 and served for a year in an anti-aircraft unit that tracked Allied bombardments. At the end of the war he spent time in a U.S. prisoner-of-war camp.

At a May 2005 screening of a movie about the life of Pope John Paul, Pope Benedict said both he and the Polish pope, who was born in 1920, had known "the savagery of the Second World War and the insane violence of men against men, of peoples against peoples."

Pope Benedict also said that only a "providential divine plan" would bring a German to the papacy after a Pole, given the tremendous historical burden of Germany's World War II invasion of Poland and the atrocities committed there.

The Polish and German embassies to the Vatican sponsored a meeting May 15 looking at the implications for their countries of having a German pope succeed a Polish pope.

"This simple fact symbolizes a historic change and reflects the long and difficult, but fruitful, process of reconciliation between Poland and Germany after the painful period of World War II, which began with the German aggression against Poland on Sept. 1, 1939," the embassies' statement said.

Popes John Paul and Benedict, it said, "lived through the atrocities of the war, seeing them from different perspectives. After the war, both were inspired by the same spirit to build a peaceful world based on reciprocal reconciliation in accordance with the teaching of the Gospel."

While much of the media will be focused on the last day's events at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the attention of many Poles will be on the pope's remarks about his Polish predecessor, about Polish society and about the future of the church in Poland.

Pope John Paul and the Polish bishops often expressed concern about declining church practice in Poland with the advent of democracy and liberal capitalism in 1989, but the numbers are still encouraging, Auxiliary Bishop Piotr Libera of Katowice, general secretary of the Polish bishops' conference, told the Italian bishops' news agency.

For example, while Poland has a Catholic population of 36.6 million and the United States has about 67 million Catholics, Poland has more than 6,400 major seminarians compared to about 4,600 major seminarians preparing to serve U.S. dioceses as priests.

According to recently released Vatican statistics, the United States has 9.8 seminarians for every 100 priests, while Poland has 22.5 seminarians for every 100 priests.

Pope meets with Polish premier to discuss trip

May. 18 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI met with Poland's Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz on May 18, less than a week before the Pontiff's trip to Poland.

The Pope spoke with the Polish leader privately for about 20 minutes. Marcinkiewicz later told reporters that Pope Benedict had expressed satisfaction with the preparations for his trip to Poland, which will take place May 23- 18. The Pontiff was particularly pleased to learn that delegations would be coming from Belarus and Ukraine to meet him, the Polish premier reported.

Marcinkiewicz observed that Pope Benedict is making his own preparations for the trip to his predecessor's homeland. From the Pope's perspective, the voyage will be "a spiritual encounter-- almost a retreat," he said.

The two men also discussed Poland's role in the recovery of Europe's spiritual patrimony. "The European Union needs Poland, and Poland needs the European Union," the Holy Father remarked.

Pope Benedict was late in arriving for his scheduled meeting with Marcinkiewicz, having run past the allotted time in a meeting earlier in the day with five newly accredited ambassadors to the Holy See. The Pope gave a common message to all five ambassadors, then offered specific reflections to each envoy.