The Weekly Benedict

Introduction

The Weekly Benedict is a compilation of documents, speeches, and other texts brought into an ebook format.

The Weekly Benedict was inspired by Catholic Apologist Jimmy Akin who came up with the idea to create a weekly link page to the words of the Holy Father.

All texts are © Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Considering the increasing prevalence of electronic book readers and their ease in reading textual documents this provides an ideal format in making available the wonderful and insightful words of Pope Benedict XVI. This ebook compilation is provided as a public service with no associated fees.

Jeff Miller The Curt Jester blog

Catholic Apologist Jimmy Akin's blog can be found at JimmyAkin.org

While this ebook publication take it's cue from Jimmy Akin's weekly post with links, it is done without association and any copyright problems or formatting mistakes are entirely my own.

Index of Source Links

List of direct document links on Vatican.va used.

Angelus

- 25 November 2012

General Audiences

- 21 November 2012

Messages

- 21 November 2012 - Message on the occasion of the Seventeenth Public Session of the Pontifical Academies

Motu Proprio

- 11 November 2012 - Apostolic Letter issued "Motu Proprio" Intima Ecclesiae natura on the Service of Charity

Speeches

- 17 November 2012 - To Bishops of the Episcopal Conference of France on their ad Limina visit

- 23 November 2012 - To participants in the World Congress of the Apostleship of the Sea

- 24 November 2012 - Ordinary Public Consistory for the creation of new Cardinals

- 26 November 2012 - To the newly created Cardinals, their family members and pilgrims present at the Consistory

Angelus

Angelus, 25 November 2012, Benedict XVI

BENEDETTO XVI

ANGELUS

St. Peter's Square

Sunday, 25 November 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Church today is celebrating Our Lord Jesus Christ as as King of the Universe. This Solemnity comes at the end of the liturgical year and sums up the mystery of Jesus “firstborn from the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth” (Collect, Year B), broadening our gaze towards the complete fulfilment of the Kingdom of God, when God will be everything to every one (cf. 1 Cor 15:28). St Cyril of Jerusalem said: “We preach not one advent only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the former. For the former gave a view of his patience; but the latter brings with it the crown of a divine kingdom... in his second, He comes attended by a host of Angels, receiving glory” (Catechesis XVI, 1, Illuminandorum, De secundo Christi adventu: pg 33, 869 a).

Jesus’ entire mission consisted in proclaiming the Kingdom of God and putting it into practice among human beings with signs and miracles. However, as the Second Vatican Council recalls “this kingdom shone out before men ... in the presence of Christ” (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, n. 5) and he established it through his death on the Cross and his Resurrection, with which he manifested himself as Lord and Messiah and Priest for ever.

This Kingdom of Christ has been entrusted to the Church which is its “seed” and its “beginning” and has the task of proclaiming it and spreading it among the peoples, with the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. ibid.). At the end of the established time, the Lord will consign the Kingdom to God the Father and will present to him all those who have lived in accordance with his commandment of love.

Dear friends, we are all called to extend God’s saving action, converting to the Gospel, following with determination the King who did not come to be served but to serve and to bear witness to the truth (cf. Mk 10:45; Jn 18:37). In this perspective I invite everyone to pray for the six new Cardinals whom I created yesterday that the Holy Spirit will strengthen them in faith and in charity and fill them with his gifts, so that they may live their new responsibilities as a further dedication to Christ and to his Kingdom. These new members of the College of Cardinals represent well the universal dimension of the Church: they are Pastors of the Church in Lebanon, in India, in Nigeria, in Colombia, and in the Philippines, and one of them has been for many years in the service of the Holy See.

Let us invoke the protection of Mary Most Holy upon each one of them and on the faithful entrusted to their service. May the Virgin help us all to live the present time in expectation of the Lord’s second coming, forcefully imploring God: “Thy Kingdom come”, and undertaking those works of light which bring us ever closer to heaven, in the awareness that, in the turbulent events of history God continues to build his Kingdom of love.

After the Angelus:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Maria Troncatti, a Sister of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians was beatified yesterday, in Macas, Ecuador. She was born in Val Camonica. She served as a nurse during the First World War then left for Ecuador, where she dedicated herself without reserve to the peoples of the jungle in evangelization and human promotion. Let us give thanks to God for her generous witness!

The pilgrimage of the university students of Rome to the tomb of St Peter will take place next Saturday, on the occasion of the Year of Faith. I shall preside at the celebration for them of first Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent.

I offer a warm welcome to all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors gathered for this Angelus prayer, especially those who have accompanied the new Cardinals created in yesterday’s Consistory. Today, on the Solemnity of Christ the King, the Church invites us to contemplate the Lordship of the Risen Saviour and to pray for the coming of his Kingdom. May Christ’s peace always reign in your hearts!

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week. Have a happy feast day! My best wishes to you!

© Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

General Audiences

General Audience of Pope Benedict XVI, 21 November 2012

BENEDICT XVI

GENERAL AUDIENCE

Paul VI Audience Hall

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Year of Faith. The reasonableness of faith in God

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Let us proceed in this Year of Faith bearing in our hearts the hope of finding all the joy there is in believing and of rediscovering the enthusiasm of communicating the truths of the faith to all. These truths are not a simple message about God, a particular piece of information on him. On the contrary they express the event of God’s encounter with human beings, a salvific and liberating encounter which fulfils the deepest aspirations of the human heart, the yearning for peace, brotherhood and love. Faith leads to the discovery that the meeting with God enhances, perfects and exalts all that is true, good and beautiful that exists in man. So it happens that while God reveals himself and lets himself be known, man comes to realize who God is and in knowing him, discovers himself, his true origin, his destiny, the greatness and dignity of human life.

Faith makes possible authentic knowledge about God which involves the whole human person: it is a “sapere”, that is, a knowledge which gives life a savour, a new taste, a joyful way of being in the world. Faith is expressed in the gift of self for others, in brotherhood which creates solidarity, the ability to love, overcoming the loneliness that brings sadness. Thus this knowledge of God through faith is not only intellectual but also vital. It is the knowledge of God-Love, thanks to his own love. The love of God, moreover, makes us see, opens our eyes, enables us to know the whole of reality, in addition to the narrow views of individualism and subjectivism that confuse consciences. Knowledge of God is therefore an experience of faith and at the same time entails an intellectual and moral development; moved in our depths by the Spirit of Jesus within us, we go beyond the horizons of our own selfishness and open ourselves to the true values of existence.

Today, in this catechesis, I would like to reflect on the reasonableness of faith in God. The Catholic Tradition, from the outset, rejected the so-called “fideism”, which is the desire to believe against reason. Credo quia absurdum (I believe because it is absurd) is not a formula that interprets the Catholic faith. Indeed God is not absurd, if anything he is a mystery. The mystery, in its turn, is not irrational but is a superabundance of sense, of meaning, of truth. If, looking at the mystery, reason sees darkness, it is not because there is no light in the mystery, but rather because there is too much of it. Just as when humans raise their eyes to look at the sun, they are blinded; but who would say that the sun is not bright or, indeed, the fount of light? Faith permits us to look at the “sun”, God, because it is the acceptance of his revelation in history and, so to speak, the true reception of God’s mystery, recognizing the great miracle. God came close to man, he offered himself so that man might know him, stooping to the creatural limitations of human reason (cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution, Dei Verbum, n. 13). At the same time, God, with his grace, illuminates reason, unfolds new horizons before it, boundless and infinite. For this reason faith is an incentive to seek always, never to stop and never to be content in the inexhaustible search for truth and reality. The prejudice of certain modern thinkers, who hold that human reason would be as it were blocked by the dogmas of faith, is false.

Exactly the opposite is true, as the great teachers of the Catholic Tradition have shown. St Augustine, before his conversion sought the Truth with great restlessness through all the philosophies he had at his disposal, finding them all unsatisfactory. His demanding, rational search, was a meaningful pedagogy for him for the encounter with the Truth of Christ. When he says: “I believe, in order to understand, and I understand the better to believe” (Discourse 43, 9: PL 38, 258), it is as if he were recounting his own life experience. Intellect and faith are not foreign or antagonistic to the divine Revelation but are both conditions for understanding its meaning, for receiving its authentic message, for approaching the threshold of the mystery. St Augustine, together with so many other Christian authors, is a witness of a faith that is practised with reason, that thinks and invites thought. On this same track St Anselm was to say in his Proslogion that the Catholic faith is a fides quaerens intellectum, where the quest for understanding is an act inherent to believing. It was to be St Thomas Aquinas in particular — strong in this tradition — who challenged the reason of the philosophers, showing how much new and fertile rational vitality comes from human thought grafted on to the principles and truths of the Christian faith.

The Catholic faith is therefore reasonable and fosters trust in human reason as well. The First Vatican Council, in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, said that reason is able to know with certainty that God exists through the Creation, whereas the possibility of knowing “easily, with complete certainty and without error” (DS 3005) the truths that concern God in the light of grace, belongs to faith alone. The knowledge of faith, moreover, is not in opposition to right reason. Blessed Pope John Paul II, in fact, in his Encyclical Fides et Ratio, sums it up in these words: “human reason is neither annulled nor debased in assenting to the contents of faith, which are in any case attained by way of free and informed choice” (n. 43).

In the irresistible desire for truth, only a harmonious relationship between faith and reason is the right road that leads to God and to the person’s complete fulfilment. This doctrine is easily recognizable throughout the New Testament. St Paul, in writing to the Christians of Corinth, maintains, as we have heard: “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:22-23). God in fact did not save the world with an act of power, but through the humiliation of his Only-Begotten Son. Measured in human parameters, the unusual ways of God clash with the demands of Greek wisdom. And yet, the Cross of Christ has a reason of its own which St Paul calls: ho logos tou staurou “the word of the cross” (1 Cor 1:18). Here the term logos means both the word and reason and, if it alludes to the word, it is because it expresses verbally what reason works out.

Hence Paul does not see the Cross as an irrational event, but as a saving factor that possesses its own reasonableness, recognizable in the light of faith. At the same time he has such trust in human reason, that he is surprised that many people, in spite of seeing the works brought about by God, persist in refusing to believe in him. In his Letter to the Romans St Paul says: “ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (1:20).

St Peter likewise also urges the Christians of the diaspora to worship: “in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pt 3:15). In an atmosphere of persecution and with a pressing need to bear witness to faith, we believers are asked to justify with well-grounded reasons their adherence to the word of the Gospel, to account for the reason for our hope.

The virtual relationship between science and faith is also founded on these premises concerning the fertile connection between understanding and believing. Scientific research leads to the knowledge of ever new truths about man and about the cosmos, as we see it. The true good of humanity, accessible in faith, unfolds the horizons within which the process of its discovery must move. Consequently research, for example, at the service of life and which aims to eliminate disease, should be encouraged. Also important are investigations that aim to discover the secrets of our planet and of the universe, in the awareness that the human being is not in charge of creation to exploit it foolishly but to preserve it and make it inhabitable. Thus faith, lived truly, does not come into conflict with science but, rather, cooperates with it, offering the basic criteria to promote the good of all and asking it to give up only those endeavours which — in opposition to God’s original plan — produce effects that are detrimental to the human being. For this reason too it is reasonable to believe: if science is a precious ally of faith for understanding God’s plan for the universe, faith, remaining faithful to this very plan, permits scientific progress always to be achieved for the good and truth of man.

This is why it is crucial for human beings to be open to faith and to know God and his plan of salvation in Jesus Christ. In the Gospel a new humanism is inaugurated, an authentic “grammar” of the human being and of the whole of reality. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “God's truth is his wisdom, which commands the whole created order and governs the world. God, who alone ‘made heaven and earth’ (Ps 115:15), can alone impart true knowledge of every created thing in relation to himself” (n. 216).

Let us trust, therefore, that our commitment to evangelization may help to restore a new centrality to the Gospel in the life of untold men and women of our time. And let us pray that all may rediscover in Christ the meaning of existence and the foundation of true freedom: without God, in fact, men and women lose themselves. The testimonies of those who have preceded us and dedicated their lives to the Gospel confirm this for ever. It is reasonable to believe, and the whole of our existence is at stake. It is worth expending oneself for Christ, he alone satisfies the desires for truth and goodness that are rooted in every human being’s soul: now, in time that passes, and in the never ending day of blessed Eternity.

To special groups:

I offer a cordial greeting to the participants in the conference on Catholic and Muslim cooperation in promoting justice in the contemporary world. I also greet the group from CAFOD, with gratitude for the Agency’s 50 years of charitable activity on behalf of the Church in England and Wales. Upon all present at today’s Audience, including those from England, Sri Lanka and the United States, I invoke God’s blessings! Thank you.

I now greet with affection the sick, the newlyweds and the young people, especially the students of Beata Maria Cristina Brando School in Casoria. Next Sunday, the last in Ordinary Time, we shall celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King. Dear young people, put Jesus at the centre of your life, and you will receive light and courage from him in every daily decision. May Christ, who made the Cross a royal throne, teach you, dear sick people, to understand the redemptive value of suffering lived in union with him. I hope that you, dear newlyweds, may recognize the Lord’s presence on your journey as a married couple, so as to share in building his Kingdom of love and peace.

Today, the liturgical Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple, we are celebrating the Day of Cloistered Religious Life. I would like to assure the Sisters called by the Lord to contemplative life of my own special closeness and that of the entire ecclesial community. At the same time, I renew my invitation to all Christians not to let cloistered monasteries lack spiritual and material support. We are so indebted, in fact, to these people who have consecrated themselves without reserve to prayer for the Church and for the world! Many thanks.

APPEAL

I am following with serious concern the escalating violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. Bearing both the victims and those who are suffering in prayerful remembrance, I feel it is my duty to state once again that hatred and violence are never a solution to problems. Moreover, I encourage the initiatives and efforts of all those who are seeking to obtain a truce and to further negotiations. I also urge all the Authorities of both Parties to make courageous decisions for peace and to put an end to this conflict that is causing such negative repercussions throughout the Middle East, persecuted by so many clashes and in need of peace and reconciliation.

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Messages

Message on the occasion of the 17th Public Meeting of the Pontifical Academies, Benedict XVI, 21 November 2012

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

ON THE OCCASION OF

THE 17TH PUBLIC MEETING OF THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMIES

To my Venerable Brother

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi

President of the Pontifical Council for Culture,

On the occasion of the annual Public Meeting of the Pontifical Academies, I am pleased to send you my cordial greeting, which I willingly extend to the Council for Coordination, to the Cardinals, Bishops, Priests and Religious, to the Ambassadors and to all the Participants.

I address a special thought to the Authorities and Academicians of the Pontificia Academia Latinitatis, [Pontifical Academy for Latin], which I recently established with the Motu Proprio Latina Lingua to give fresh vigour to the knowledge, study and use of Latin, both in the Church and at universities and schools. I warmly wish that the activity of this new Academy, under the guidance of Prof. Ivano Dionigi, be worthwhile and fruitful in promoting the Latin language, a precious legacy of Tradition and a privileged testimony of a cultural heritage, that must be handed down for generations to come.

The theme of the Public Meeting of the Pontifical Academies, organized this year by the Distinguished Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters of the “Virtuosi al Pantheon”, is: “Pulchritudinis Fidei Testis. The Artist, Like the Church, a Witness to the Beauty of Faith”, which recalls the incipit of the Motu Proprio with which I recently chose to unite the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church with the Pontifical Council for Culture, to ensure that in a broad and well-structured vision of the world of culture, the important milieu of the cultural goods of the Church would receive proper attention and their rightful place. A more organic integration of this context in the mission of the Dicastery will certainly produce fertile results, also with a view to an ever more adequate conservation and conscious appreciation of the Church’s extraordinary patrimony of history and art, an eloquent testimony of the fruitfulness of the encounter of the Christian faith with human genius.

With such a theme this 17th Public Meeting fits perfectly into the Year of Faith whose purpose is to propose anew to all the faithful the strength and beauty of faith. As I myself have been able to experience, this was the great aspiration of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.

During the Eucharistic Celebration for the opening of the Year of Faith I once again consigned the Messages of the Council to representatives of the various categories, including artists. The Council’s concentrated and profound Message to Artists wonderfully sums up the path the Church embarked upon in the 20th century — especially through the constant and targeted action of the Servant of God Paul VI— to revive dialogue with the world of the arts, ever more distant from the horizon of meaning and the experience of faith proposed by the Church.

The impetus that the Second Vatican Council gave to dialogue was later expressed in other forms and actions, as meaningful as they were crucial. Blessed John Paul II chose to write the Letter to Artists on the eve of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, entrusting to the Church and to artists a milestone on the journey of dialogue and collaboration. I would like to take only one idea from that famous text: “Every genuine art form in its own way is a path to the inmost reality of man and of the world. It is therefore a wholly valid approach to the realm of faith, which gives human experience its ultimate meaning. That is why the Gospel fullness of truth was bound from the beginning to stir the interest of artists, who by their very nature are alert to every ‘epiphany’ of the inner beauty of things”.

Wishing once again to solicit this necessary and vital dialogue, I myself met with a large group of artists in the Sistine Chapel on 21 November 2009, to address an intense appeal to them. In it I affirmed the Church’s desire to rediscover the joy of common reflection and harmonious action in order to put the theme of beauty back at the centre of the attention of both the ecclesial community and civil society. As I said on that deeply evocative occasion, beauty must once again be reasserted and demonstrated in all expressions of art. However, it must not overlook the experience of faith but indeed must confront it freely and openly, to find in it inspiration and content. The beauty of faith, in fact, can never be an obstacle to the creation of artistic beauty, because, in a certain way, it is its lifeblood and its ultimate realm. In fact true artists, described by the conciliar Message as “the guardians of beauty in the world”, thanks to their special aesthetic sensitivity and their intuition can grasp and understand more profoundly than others the beauty proper to the faith, and thus express it anew and communicate it in their own language.

In this regard we can therefore speak of artists as privileged witnesses to the beauty of faith. Thus they can take part, with their specific and original contribution, in the very vocation and mission of the Church, particularly when, in the various expressions of their art, they wish or are commissioned, to produce works of art directly linked to the experience of faith and worship, to the liturgical action of the Church whose centrality is defined by the Second Vatican Council in the well-known phrase “fons et culmen” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10).

In this regard, the young priest Giovanni Battista Montini wrote an essay for the first issue of the nascent review Arte Sacra, dated July-September 1931, with the emblematic title “On sacred art of the future”, in which he analysed, with great lucidity and clarity, the panorama of sacred art of the early 20th century, with its trends, its qualities and its limitations. Decades later, for us too this analysis proves to be of extraordinary timeliness and depth.

He states, first of all, that “sacred art faces the supreme problem of expressing the ineffable”, which is why it is necessary “to initiate oneself into mysticism, and to reach with the experience of the senses a reverberation, a flutter of the invisible Light”. Then, addressing the figure of the Christian artist, who tries his hand in particular at sacred art he writes: “one can also see how and where true sacred art is born: from the devout and believing, prayerful, wishful artist who watches in silence and goodness, awaiting his Pentecost.... I think it is the task of our Christian artists to prepare with their works a state of mind in which our spiritual unity, now torn apart, is pieced together in Christ; unity, I say, that reconciles in due harmony the impression and the expression; the interior and the exterior world; spirit and matter; the soul and the flesh; God and man” (Arte Sacra, a. 1, n. 1, July-September 1931, p. 16).

At the beginning of the Year of Faith I therefore address a warm invitation to all Christian artists, as well as to those who are open to the dialogue with faith, to take the path so perspicaciously marked out by the future Paul VI and to ensure that their artistic track may become and reveal itself ever more brightly as an integral itinerary in which all the dimensions of human life are involved, so that it witnesses effectively to the beauty of faith in Jesus Christ, an image of the glory of God that illuminates the history of humanity (cf. 2 Cor 4; Col 1:15).

To encourage all the younger artists who wish to make their own contribution to promoting and bringing about a new Christian humanism through their research in art, accepting the proposal formulated by the Council for Coordination between the Academies, I am pleased to award ex aequo the Prize of the Pontifical Academies, dedicated this year to the arts and in particular to the spheres of painting and sculpture, to a Polish sculptor, Anna Gulak and to a Spanish painter, David Ribes Lopez.

I would also like to offer the Medal of the Pontificate to the young Italian sculptor, Jacopo Cardillo, as a sign of appreciation and encouragement.

Lastly, I express my hope that the commitment of all the Academicians in their respective fields will be ever more enthusiastic, and that they will also welcome the valuable opportunity offered them by the Year of Faith. And as I entrust each one to the motherly protection of the Virgin Mary, the Tota Pulchra, the model of the faith of believers, I cordially impart to you, Your Eminence, and to everyone present a special Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, 21 November 2012, Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

BENEDICTUS PP XVI

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Motu Proprio

Apostolic Letter issued “Motu Proprio” On the Service of Charity, 11 November 2012 - Benedict XVI

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

Apostolic Letter issued “Motu Proprio”

On the Service of Charity

Introduction

“The Church’s deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia) and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable” (Deus Caritas Est, 25).

The service of charity is also a constitutive element of the Church’s mission and an indispensable expression of her very being (cf. ibid.); all the faithful have the right and duty to devote themselves personally to living the new commandment that Christ left us (cf. Jn 15:12), and to offering our contemporaries not only material assistance, but also refreshment and care for their souls (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 28). The Church is also called as a whole to the exercise of the diakonia of charity, whether in the small communities of particular Churches or on the level of the universal Church. This requires organization “if it is to be an ordered service to the community” (cf. ibid., 20), an organization which entails a variety of institutional expressions.

With regard to this diakonia of charity, in my Encyclical Deus Caritas Est I pointed out that “in conformity with the episcopal structure of the Church, the Bishops, as successors of the Apostles, are charged with primary responsibility for carrying out in the particular Churches” the service of charity (No. 32); at the same time, however, I noted that “the Code of Canon Law, in the canons on the ministry of the Bishop, does not expressly mention charity as a specific sector of episcopal activity” (ibid.). Although “the Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops explored more specifically the duty of charity as a responsibility incumbent upon the whole Church and upon each Bishop in his Diocese” (ibid.), there was still a need to fill the aforementioned lacuna and to give adequate expression in canonical legislation to both the essential nature of the service of charity in the Church and its constitutive relationship with the episcopal ministry, while outlining the legal aspects of this ecclesial service, especially when carried out in an organized way and with the explicit support of the Bishops.

In view of this, with the present Motu Proprio I intend to provide an organic legislative framework for the better overall ordering of the various organized ecclesial forms of the service of charity, which are closely related to the diaconal nature of the Church and the episcopal ministry.

It is important, however, to keep in mind that “practical activity will always be insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love nourished by an encounter with Christ” (ibid., 34). In carrying out their charitable activity, therefore, the various Catholic organizations should not limit themselves merely to collecting and distributing funds, but should show special concern for individuals in need and exercise a valuable educational function within the Christian community, helping people to appreciate the importance of sharing, respect and love in the spirit of the Gospel of Christ. The Church’s charitable activity at all levels must avoid the risk of becoming just another form of organized social assistance (cf. ibid., 31).

The organized charitable initiatives promoted by the faithful in various places differ widely one from the other, and call for appropriate management. In a particular way, the work of Caritas has expanded at the parish, diocesan, national and international levels. Caritas is an institution promoted by the ecclesiastical Hierarchy which has rightly earned the esteem and trust of the faithful and of many other people around the world for its generous and consistent witness of faith and its concrete ability to respond to the needs of the poor. In addition to this broad initiative, officially supported by the Church’s authority, many other initiatives have arisen in different places from the free enterprise of the faithful, who themselves wish to help in various ways to offer a concrete witness of charity towards those in need. While differing in their origin and juridical status, both are expressions of sensitivity and a desire to respond to the same pressing need.

The Church as an institution is not extraneous to those organized initiatives which represent a free expression of the concern of the baptized for individuals and peoples in need. The Church’s Pastors should always welcome these initiatives as a sign of the sharing of all the faithful in the mission of the Church; they should respect the specific characteristics and administrative autonomy which these initiatives enjoy, in accordance with their nature, as a manifestation of the freedom of the baptized.

Alongside these, the Church’s authority has, on its own initiative, promoted specific agencies which provide institutionally for allocating donations made by the faithful, following suitable legal and administrative methods which allow for a more effective response to concrete needs.

Nevertheless, to the extent that such activities are promoted by the Hierarchy itself, or are explicitly supported by the authority of the Church’s Pastors, there is a need to ensure that they are managed in conformity with the demands of the Church’s teaching and the intentions of the faithful, and that they likewise respect the legitimate norms laid down by civil authorities. In view of these requirements, it became necessary to establish in the Church’s law certain essential norms inspired by the general criteria of canonical discipline, which would make explicit in this sector of activity the legal responsibilities assumed by the various subjects involved, specifying in particular the position of authority and coordination belonging to the diocesan Bishop. At the same time, the norms in question need to be broad enough to embrace the significant diversity of the institutions of Catholic inspiration which are engaged as such in this sector, whether those originating from the Hierarchy or those born of the direct initiative of the faithful, received and encouraged by the local Pastors. While it was necessary to lay down norms in this regard, there was also a need to consider the requirements of justice and the responsibility of Bishops before the faithful, with respect for the legitimate autonomy of each institution.

Dispositive Part

Consequently, upon the proposal of the Cardinal President of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, and after consultation with the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, I establish and decree the following:

Art. 1. - § 1. The faithful have the right to join in associations and to establish agencies to carry out specific charitable services, especially on behalf of the poor and suffering. To the extent that these are linked to the charitable service of the Church’s Pastors and/or intend to use for this purpose contributions made by the faithful, they must submit their own Statutes for the approval of the competent ecclesiastical authority and comply with the following norms.

§ 2. Similarly, it is also the right of the faithful to establish foundations to fund concrete charitable initiatives, in accordance with the norms of canons 1303 of the Code of Canon Law (CIC) and 1047 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO). If foundations of this type correspond to the characteristics set forth in § 1, they will also observe, congrua congruis referendo, the provisions of the present law.

§ 3. In addition to observing the canonical legislation, the collective charitable initiatives to which this Motu Proprio refers are required to follow Catholic principles in their activity and they may not accept commitments which could in any way affect the observance of those principles.

§ 4. Agencies and foundations for charitable purposes promoted by Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life are required to comply with these norms, and they must follow the prescriptions of canons 312 § 2 CIC and 575 § 2 CCEO.

Art. 2. - § 1. The Statutes of each charitable agency referred to in the preceding article must also contain, in addition to its institutional offices and structures of governance in accordance with canon 95 § 1 CIC, the guiding principles and objectives of the initiative, the management of funds, the profile of its workers, as well as the reports and information which must be presented to the competent ecclesiastical authority.

§ 2. A charitable agency may use the name “Catholic” only with the written consent of the competent authority, as laid down by canon 300 CIC.

§ 3. Agencies promoted by the faithful for charitable purposes can have an Ecclesiastical Assistant appointed in accordance with the Statutes, according to the norm of canons 324 § 2 and 317 CIC.

§ 4. At the same time, the ecclesiastical authority must bear in mind its duty to regulate the exercise of the rights of the faithful in accordance with canons 223 § 2 CIC and 26 § 3 CCEO, and thus to avoid the proliferation of charitable initiatives to the detriment of their activity and effectiveness with regard to their stated goals.

Art. 3. - § 1. With regard to the preceding articles, it is understood that the competent authority at the respective levels is that indicated by canons 312 CIC and 575 CCEO.

§ 2. For agencies not approved at the national level, even though they operate in different Dioceses, the competent authority is understood to be the diocesan Bishop of the place where the agency has its principal office. In any event, the agency has the duty to inform the Bishops of other Dioceses where it operates and to respect the guidelines for the activities of the various charitable agencies present in those Dioceses.

Art. 4. § 1. The diocesan Bishop (cf. canon 134 § 3 CIC and canon 987 CCEO) exercises his proper pastoral solicitude for the service of charity in the particular Church entrusted to him as its Pastor, guide and the one primarily responsible for that service.

§ 2. The diocesan Bishop encourages and supports the initiatives and works of service to neighbour in his particular Church, and encourages in the faithful the spirit of practical charity as an expression of the Christian life and sharing in the mission of the Church, as indicated in canons 215 and 222 CIC and 25 and 18 CCEO.

§ 3. It is the responsibility of the diocesan Bishop to ensure that in the activities and management of these agencies the norms of the Church’s universal and particular law are respected, as well as the intentions of the faithful who made donations or bequests for these specific purposes (cf. canons 1300 CIC and 1044 CCEO).

Art. 5. - The diocesan Bishop is to ensure that the Church enjoys the right to carry out charitable activities, and he is to take care that the faithful and the institutions under his supervision comply with the legitimate civil legislation in this area.

Art. 6. – It is the responsibility of the diocesan Bishop, as indicated by canons 394 § 1 CIC and 203 § 1 CCEO, to coordinate within his territory the different works of charitable service, both those promoted by the Hierarchy itself and those arising from initiatives of the faithful, without prejudice to their proper autonomy in accordance with their respective Statutes. In particular, he is to take care that their activities keep alive the spirit of the Gospel.

Art. 7. - § 1. The agencies referred to in Article 1 § 1 are required to select their personnel from among persons who share, or at least respect, the Catholic identity of these works.

§ 2. To ensure an evangelical witness in the service of charity, the diocesan Bishop is to take care that those who work in the Church’s charitable apostolate, along with due professional competence, give an example of Christian life and witness to a formation of heart which testifies to a faith working through charity. To this end, he is also to provide for their theological and pastoral formation, through specific curricula agreed upon by the officers of various agencies and through suitable aids to the spiritual life.

Art. 8. – Wherever necessary, due to the number and variety of initiatives, the diocesan Bishop is to establish in the Church entrusted to his care an Office to direct and coordinate the service of charity in his name.

Art. 9. - § 1. The Bishop is to encourage in every parish of his territory the creation of a local Caritas service or a similar body, which will also promote in the whole community educational activities aimed at fostering a spirit of sharing and authentic charity. When appropriate, this service is to be established jointly by various parishes in the same territory.

§ 2. It is the responsibility of the Bishop and the respective parish priest to ensure that together with Caritas, other charitable initiatives can coexist and develop within the parish under the general coordination of the parish priest, taking into account, however, the prescriptions of Article 2 § 4 above.

§ 3. It is the duty of the diocesan Bishop and the respective parish priests to see that in this area the faithful are not led into error or misunderstanding; hence they are to prevent publicity being given through parish or diocesan structures to initiatives which, while presenting themselves as charitable, propose choices or methods at odds with the Church’s teaching.

Art. 10. - § 1. It is the responsibility of the Bishop to supervise the ecclesiastical goods of the charitable agencies subject to his authority.

§ 2. It is the duty of the diocesan Bishop to ensure that the proceeds of collections made in accordance with canons 1265 and 1266 CIC and canons 1014 and 1015 CCEO are used for their stated purposes [cf. canons 1267 CIC, 1016 CCEO].

§ 3. In particular, the diocesan Bishop is to ensure that charitable agencies dependent upon him do not receive financial support from groups or institutions that pursue ends contrary to Church’s teaching. Similarly, lest scandal be given to the faithful, the diocesan Bishop is to ensure that these charitable agencies do not accept contributions for initiatives whose ends, or the means used to pursue them, are not in conformity with the Church’s teaching.

§ 4. In a particular way, the Bishop is to see that the management of initiatives dependent on him offers a testimony of Christian simplicity of life. To this end, he will ensure that salaries and operational expenses, while respecting the demands of justice and a necessary level of professionalism, are in due proportion to analogous expenses of his diocesan Curia.

§ 5. To permit the ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Article 3 § 1 to exercise its duty of supervision, the agencies mentioned in Article 1 § 1, are required to submit to the competent Ordinary an annual financial report in a way which he himself will indicate.

Art. 11. – The diocesan Bishop is obliged, if necessary, to make known to the faithful the fact that the activity of a particular charitable agency is no longer being carried out in conformity with the Church’s teaching, and then to prohibit that agency from using the name “Catholic” and to take the necessary measures should personal responsibilities emerge.

Art. 12. - § 1. The diocesan Bishop is to encourage the national and international activity of the charitable agencies under his care, especially cooperation with poorer ecclesiastical circumscriptions by analogy with the prescriptions of canons 1274 § 3 CIC and 1021 § 3 CCEO.

§ 2. Pastoral concern for charitable works, depending on circumstances of time and place, can be carried out jointly by various neighbouring Bishops with regard to a number of Churches, in accordance with the norm of law. When such joint activity is international in character, the competent Dicastery of the Holy See is to be consulted in advance. For charitable initiatives on the national level, it is fitting that the Bishop consult the respective office of the Bishops’ Conference.

Art. 13. – The local ecclesiastical authority retains the full right to give permission for initiatives undertaken by Catholic agencies in areas of his jurisdiction, with due respect for canonical norms and the specific identity of the individual agencies. It is also the duty of the Bishop to ensure that the activities carried out in his Diocese are conducted in conformity with ecclesiastical discipline, either prohibiting them or adopting any measures needed in cases where that discipline is not respected.

Art. 14. – Where appropriate, the Bishop is to promote charitable initiatives in cooperation with other Churches or Ecclesial Communities, respecting the proper identity of each.

Art. 15. - § 1. The Pontifical Council Cor Unum has the task of promoting the application of this legislation and ensuring that it is applied at all levels, without prejudice to the competence of the Pontifical Council for the Laity with regard to associations of the faithful as provided for in Article 133 of the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus, the competence of the Secretariat of State’s Section for Relations with States, and the general competences of other Dicasteries and Institutes of the Roman Curia. In particular, the Pontifical Council Cor Unum is to take care that the charitable service of Catholic institutions at the international level is always to be carried out in communion with the various local Churches.

§ 2. The Pontifical Council Cor Unum is also competent for the canonical establishment of charitable agencies at the international level; it thus takes on the responsibilities of discipline and promotion entailed by law.

I order that everything I have laid down in this Apostolic Letter issued Motu Proprio be fully observed, notwithstanding anything to the contrary, even if worthy of particular mention, and I decree that it be promulgated by publication in the daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano and enter into force on 10 December 2012.

Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 11 November, in the year 2012, the eighth of my Pontificate.

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

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Speeches

To a group of bishops of the French Episcopal Conference on their ad Limina visit, Benedict XVI, 17 November 2012

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

TO A GROUP OF BISHOPS FROM

THE FRENCH EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE

ON THEIR "AD LIMINA" VISIT

Consistory Hall

Saturday, 17 November 2012

Your Eminence,

Dear Brothers in the Episcopate,

I thank you, Your Eminence, for your words. I cherish a very vivid memory of my stay in Paris in 2008, which made possible some intense moments of faith and a meeting with the world of culture. In the Message I addressed to you on the occasion of the gathering in Lourdes that you organized last March I recalled that “the Second Vatican Council was and remains an authentic sign of God for our time”. This is particularly true in the context of the dialogue between the Church and the world, this world “and her life and activity there” (cf. Gaudium et Spes, n. 40), on which she wishes to radiate the light that shines from the divine life (ibid.).

As you know, the more aware the Church is of her being and her mission, the better able she is to love this world, to turn a trusting gaze upon it inspired by that of Jesus, without succumbing to the temptation to discouragement or withdrawal. Moreover “in this way the Church carries out her mission and in that very act she stimulates and advances human and civil culture” (n. 58), the Council says.

Your nation is endowed with a long Christian history that cannot be ignored or diminished and that witnesses eloquently to this truth, which still today shapes its unique vocation. You may be quite sure that not only the faithful of your dioceses but also the faithful of the whole world have great expectations of the Church in France. As pastors, we are of course aware of our limitations but, trusting in the strength of Christ, we also know that it is our task to be “heralds of the faith” (Lumen Gentium, n. 1), who with the priests and the faithful must witness to Christ’s message, “in such a way that the light of the Gospel will shine on all activities of the faithful” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 43).

The Year of Faith enables us to grow in confidence in the intrinsic power and richness of the Gospel message. Have we not often seen that it is the words of faith, these simple, direct words that are full of the vitality of the divine Word, which touch hearts and spirits most effectively and bring the most decisive illumination? Let us therefore not fear to talk about the mystery of God and the mystery of man with totally apostolic vigour and to expound tirelessly the riches of the Christian doctrine. There are in it words and realities, fundamental convictions and ways of reasoning which alone can bring the hope for which the world is thirsting.

In the important social debates, the Church must make her voice heard tirelessly and with determination. She does so with respect for the French tradition as regards the distinction between the spheres of competence of both the Church and the State. Precisely in this context the harmony that exists between faith and reason gives you a special assurance: the message of Christ and of his Church does not only bear a religious identity that asks to be respected as such; it bears a wisdom that makes it possible to envisage with rectitude practical responses to the pressing and, at times anguishing, issues of these times. In continuing, as you do, to exercise the prophetic dimension of your episcopal ministry, you will contribute to these debates an indispensable word of truth, which liberates hearts and opens them to hope. This word, I am sure, is awaited. It is always favourably received when it is presented charitably, not as the result of our own reflections but first of all as the word God wishes to address to every person.

In this regard I remember the meeting that took place in the Collège des Bernardins. France can consider herself honoured to count among her sons and daughters a number of eminent intellectuals, some of whom view the Church favourably and with respect. Whether or not they are believers, they are aware of the immense challenges of our epoch when the Christian message is an irreplaceable point of reference. Other intellectual or philosophical traditions may be exhausted, but the Church finds in her divine mission the assurance and courage to preach, in season and out of season, the universal call to salvation, the greatness of the divine plan for humanity, the responsibility of human beings, their dignity and their freedom — and, despite the injury of sin — their ability to discern in conscience what is true and what is good, and their openness to divine grace. At the Collège des Bernardins, I wanted to recall that monastic life, wholly oriented to the search for God, the quaerere Deum, wells up as a source of renewal and progress for culture. The religious and, especially, the monastic communities in your country which I know well can count on your esteem and attentive care, with respect for the charism of each one. Religious life, at the exclusive service of God’s work to which nothing may be preferred (cf. The Rule of St Benedict) is a treasure in your dioceses. It contributes a radical testimony of the way in which Christian life, precisely when it is wholly devoted to following Christ, completely fulfils the human vocation to the blessed life. The whole of society, and not only the Church, is greatly enriched by this testimony. Offered in humility, gentleness and silence, it contributes, so to speak, to the proof that there is more to man than man himself.

As the Council recalls, the Church’s liturgical action is also part of her contribution to the work of civilization (cf. Gaudium et Spes, n. 58). Indeed the liturgy is the celebration of the central event of human history, the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. Thus it bears witness to the love with which God loves humanity, to the fact that human life has a meaning and that it is through their vocation that men and women are called to share in the glorious life of the Trinity. Humanity needs this witness.

People need to perceive, through the liturgical celebrations, that the Church is aware of the lordship of God and of dignity of the human being. She has the right to be able to discern, over and above the limitations that will always mark her rites and ceremonies, that Christ “is present in the sacrifice of Mass and in the person of the minister” (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 7). Knowing the care with which you prepare your liturgical celebrations, I encourage you to cultivate the art of celebrating, to help your priests in this regard and to work ceaselessly for the liturgical formation of seminarians and of the faithful. Respect for the established norms expresses love and fidelity for the faith of the Church, for the treasure of grace that she preserves and transmits; the beauty of celebrations, far more than innovations and subjective adjustments, makes evangelization a lasting and effective work.

Today you are deeply concerned about the transmission of the faith to the young people. Numerous families in your country continue to guarantee it. I bless and encourage with all my heart the initiatives you are taking to support these families, surrounding them with your solicitude so as to encourage them to assume responsibility in the area of education. The responsibility of parents in this domain is a precious asset that the Church defends and promotes, both as an inalienable and essential dimension of the common good of all society and as a requirement of the dignity of the person and of the family. You also know that challenges are not lacking in this field: whether it is a matter of the difficulty linked to passing on the faith received — family, social — of that of faith taken on personally on the threshold of the adulthood or, further, of the difficulty of a real rupture in its transmission when several generations succeed one another, already distanced from the living faith. There is also the enormous challenge of living in a society that does not always share the teachings of Christ and sometimes seeks to ridicule or marginalize the Church, wishing to confine her solely to the private sphere. To tackle these immense challenges the Church needs credible witnesses. Christian testimony rooted in Christ can be lived authentically and consistently in multiform ways with no set plan. It is born and renewed ceaselessly under the action of the Holy Spirit. In support of this witness, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a very useful tool, for it manifests the power and beauty of the faith. I encourage you to make it known far and wide, particularly this year as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of its publication.

In your rightful position, you also bear witness through the simplicity of your life, your pastoral care and above all your union with one another and with the Successor of the Apostle Peter. Aware of the power of example, you will also be able to find the words and actions to encourage the faithful to embody this “unity of life”. They must feel that their faith engages them, that it frees them rather than being a burden and that adherence is a source of joy and fruitfulness (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici, n. 17). This applies as much to their attachment and faithfulness to the moral teaching of the Church as for example to their courage in showing their Christian conviction without arrogance but with respect, in the various milieus in which they grow up. Those of them who entered into public life have a special responsibility in this domain. With the bishops, they will have at heart attention to projects of civil law that can undermine the norms protecting marriage between a man and a woman, the right to life from conception to death and the proper approach of bioethics, faithful to the documents of the Magisterium. It is more necessary than ever that Christians choose to serve the common good, deepening in particular their knowledge of the Church’s social teaching.

You can count on my prayers that your efforts in this sphere may bear abundant fruit. To conclude, I invoke the blessing of the Lord upon you, upon your priests and upon your deacons, upon the men and women religious, upon the other consecrated people who work in your dioceses and upon your faithful. May God accompany you always. Many thanks.

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To participants in the World Congress of the Apostleship of the Sea, Benedict XVI, 23 November 2012

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

TO PARTICIPANTS IN THE WORLD CONGRESS

OF THE APOSTLESHIP OF THE SEA

Clementine Hall

Friday, 23 November 2012

Venerable Brothers,

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I welcome you with joy, at the end of your work in the 23rd World Congress of the Apostleship of the Sea. I cordially greet Cardinal Antonio Maria Vegliò, President of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People, grateful for his courteous words, as well as the collaborators of that Dicastery and those working in this specific area. These have been intense days for you, delving into important themes, such as proclaiming the Gospel to a growing number of seafarers who belong to Eastern Churches, helping Christians and non-Christians alike, seeking to make ecumenical and interreligious collaboration ever more solid. Confronted with the hardships faced by workers in the maritime industries, such as fishermen — and their families — there is a growing need to face these problems with “an integral vision of man, reflecting the different aspects of the human person, contemplated through a lens purified by charity” (Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, n. 32).

These are only a few of the many points which the Apostleship of the Sea has at heart and which were discussed at your Congress and, especially, are well attested by the long history of this worthy initiative. In fact, already in 1922, Pope Pius XI approved its Constitutions and its Rule, encouraging the first chaplains and volunteers in their mission to “expand the maritime ministry”; and, 75 years later, Blessed Pope John Paul II confirmed this mission in his Motu Proprio Stella Maris. In continuity with this precious tradition, you find yourselves reflecting on the new evangelization in the maritime world, in the same hall as that in which the 13th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops was held in October, to find “the new methods and means for transmitting the Good News to people in our world today with a renewed enthusiasm” (Lineamenta, Introduction). In this way you have answered the appeal, that I addressed to all in proclaiming the Year of Faith, to give a renewed impetus to the mission of the Church “so as to help all believers in Christ to acquire a more conscious and vigorous adherence to the Gospel” (Motu Proprio Porta Fidei, n. 8).

Since the dawn of Christianity, the maritime world has been an effective vehicle for evangelization. The Apostles and disciples of Jesus were able to go all over the world, preaching the Gospel to the whole creation (cf. Mk 16:15) thanks to sea voyages; we need think only of St Paul’s journeys. This is how they began their journey to spread the Word of God “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Today too the Church sails the seas to bring the Gospel to all the nations and the network of your presence in all the ports of call around the world, your daily visits to ships in port and your brotherly welcome to crews during their layovers — are a visible sign of your affectionate attention to those who cannot receive ordinary pastoral care.

This world of the sea, with the continuous migration of people today, must take into account the complex effects of globalization and, unfortunately, must come to grips with situations of injustice, especially when the freedom of a ship’s crew to go ashore is restricted, when they are abandoned altogether along with the vessels on which they work, when they risk piracy at sea and the damage of illegal fishing (cf. Angelus, 18 January 2009). The vulnerability of seafarers, fishermen and sailors calls for an even more attentive solicitude on the Church’s part and should stimulate the motherly care that, through you, she expresses to all those whom you meet in ports and on ships or whom you help on board during those long months at sea.

A special thought goes to those working in the vast fishing sector and to their families. Indeed, they more than others must face the difficulties of the present time and live the uncertainty of the future, marked by the negative effects of climate change and the excessive exploitation of resources. To you fishermen, who seek decent and safe working conditions, safeguarding the dignity of your families, the protection of the environment and the defence of every person’s dignity, I would like to ensure the Church’s closeness. In this context the lay apostolate is already particularly active and has many permanent deacons and volunteers in the “Stella Maris” Centres. Yet, among mariners themselves there is above all a growing concern to support other seafarers, encouraging them to rediscover and intensify their relationship with God during long ocean voyages, and helping them with the spirit of charity in times of danger.

To use a metaphor well known to you, I urge you to take up the treasure of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which is like “a compass that permits the Barque of the Church to put out into the deep in the midst of storms or on calm and peaceful waves, to sail safely and to reach her destination” (General Audience, 10 October 2012). In particular, recalling the decree Ad Gentes on the Church’s Missionary Activity, I wish today to renew the ecclesial mandate that places you, in communion with your local Churches, in the front line in the evangelization of so many men and women from different nations who pass through your ports. Be apostles faithful to the mission of proclaiming the Gospel, show the loving face of the Church which also welcomes and makes herself close to this portion of the People of God; respond without hesitation to maritime people who wait for you on board to appease the deep longing of their soul and make them feel active members of the community. I hope that each one of you may rediscover every day the beauty of faith, in order always to bear a consistent witness to it. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Stella Maris and Stella Matutina, never cease to illuminate your work so that seafarers may know the Gospel and encounter the Lord Jesus who is the Way, the Truth and the Light. I impart my heartfelt Apostolic Blessing to each one of you, to your colleagues and to your loved ones.

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Papal Mass on the occasion of the Ordinary Public Consistory for the creation of new cardinals, Address of Benedict XVI, 24 November 2012

ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY

FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS

PAPAL MASS

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Vatican Basilica

Saturday, 24 November 2012

“I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church”

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

These words, which the new Cardinals are soon to proclaim in the course of their solemn profession of faith, come from the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed, the synthesis of the Church’s faith that each of us receives at baptism. Only by professing and preserving this rule of truth intact can we be authentic disciples of the Lord. In this Consistory, I would like to reflect in particular on the meaning of the word “catholic”, a word which indicates an essential feature of the Church and her mission. Much could be said on this subject and various different approaches could be adopted: today I shall limit myself to one or two thoughts.

The characteristic marks of the Church are in accordance with God’s plan, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us: “it is Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, makes his Church one, holy, catholic and apostolic, and it is he who calls her to realize each of these qualities” (no. 811). Specifically, what makes the Church catholic is the fact that Christ in his saving mission embraces all humanity. While during his earthly life Jesus’ mission was limited to the Jewish people, “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 15:24), from the beginning it was meant to bring the light of the Gospel to all peoples and lead all nations into the kingdom of God. When he saw the faith of the centurion at Capernaum, Jesus cried out: “I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 8:11). This universalist perspective can be seen, among other things, from the way Jesus applied to himself not only the title “Son of David”, but also “Son of Man” (Mk 10:33), as in the Gospel passage that we have just heard. The expression “Son of Man”, in the language of Jewish apocalyptic literature inspired by the vision of history found in the book of the prophet Daniel (cf. 7:13-14), calls to mind the figure who appears “with the clouds of heaven” (v. 13). This is an image that prophesies a completely new kingdom, sustained not by human powers, but by the true power that comes from God. Jesus takes up this rich and complex expression and refers it to himself in order to manifest the true character of his Messianism: a mission directed to the whole man and to every man, transcending all ethnic, national and religious particularities. And it is actually by following Jesus, by allowing oneself to be drawn into his humanity and hence into communion with God, that one enters this new kingdom proclaimed and anticipated by the Church, a kingdom that conquers fragmentation and dispersal.

Jesus sends his Church not to a single group, then, but to the whole human race, and thus he unites it, in faith, in one people, in order to save it. The Second Vatican Council expresses this succinctly in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium: “All men are called to belong to the new people of God. Therefore this people, while remaining one and unique, is to be spread throughout the whole world and through every age, so that the design of God's will may be fulfilled” (no. 13). Hence the universality of the Church flows from the universality of God’s unique plan of salvation for the world. This universal character emerges clearly on the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit fills the first Christian community with his presence, so that the Gospel may spread to all nations, causing the one People of God to grow in all peoples. From its origins, then, the Church is oriented kat’holon, it embraces the whole universe. The Apostles bear witness to Christ, addressing people from all over the world, and each of their hearers understands them as if they were speaking his native language (cf. Acts 2:7-8). From that day, in the “power of the Holy Spirit”, according to Jesus’ promise, the Church proclaims the dead and risen Lord “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The Church’s universal mission does not arise from below, but descends from above, from the Holy Spirit: from the beginning it seeks to express itself in every culture so as to form the one People of God. Rather than beginning as a local community that slowly grows and spreads outwards, it is like yeast oriented towards a universal horizon, towards the whole: universality is inscribed within it.

Our Lord proclaims: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mk 16:15); “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19). With these words, Jesus sends the Apostles to all creation, so that God’s saving action may reach everywhere. But if we consider the moment of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, we see that the disciples are still closed in their thinking, looking to the restoration of a new Davidic kingdom. They ask the Lord: “will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). How does Jesus answer? He answers by broadening their horizons and giving them both the promise and a task: he promises that they will be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, and he confers upon them the task of bearing witness to him all over the world, transcending the cultural and religious confines within which they were accustomed to think and live, so as to open themselves to the universal Kingdom of God. At the beginning of the Church’s journey, the Apostles and disciples set off without any human security, purely in the strength of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel and the faith. This is the yeast that spreads round the world, enters into different events and into a wide range of cultural and social contexts, while remaining a single Church. Around the Apostles, Christian communities spring up, but these are “the” Church which is always the same, one and universal, whether in Jerusalem, Antioch, or Rome. And when the Apostles speak of the Church, they are not referring to a community of their own, but to the Church of Christ, and they insist on the unique, universal and all-inclusive identity of the Catholica that is realized in every local church. The Church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic, she reflects in herself the source of her life and her journey: the unity and communion of the Trinity.

Situated within the context and the perspective of the Church’s unity and universality is the College of Cardinals: it presents a variety of faces, because it expresses the face of the universal Church. In this Consistory, I want to highlight in particular the fact that the Church is the Church of all peoples, and so she speaks in the various cultures of the different continents. She is the Church of Pentecost: amid the polyphony of the various voices, she raises a single harmonious song to the living God.

I cordially greet the official Delegations of the different countries, the bishops, priests, consecrated persons, and lay faithful of the various diocesan communities and all those who share in the joy of the new members of the College of Cardinals – their family, friends and co-workers. The new Cardinals, who represent different dioceses around the world, are henceforth associated by a special title with the Church of Rome, and in this way they reinforce the spiritual bonds that unite the whole Church, brought to life by Christ and gathered around the Successor of Peter. At the same time, today’s rite expresses the supreme value of fidelity. Indeed, the oath that you are about to take, venerable brothers, contains words filled with profound spiritual and ecclesial significance: “I promise and I swear, from now on and for as long as I live, to remain faithful to Christ and his Gospel, constantly obedient to the Holy Apostolic Roman Church”. And when you receive the red biretta, you will be reminded that it means “you must be ready to conduct yourselves with fortitude, even to the shedding of your blood, for the increase of the Christian faith, for the peace and well-being of the people of God”. Whereas the consignment of the ring is accompanied by the admonition: “Know that your love for the Church is strengthened by your love for the Prince of the Apostles”.

In these gestures and the words that accompany them, we see an indication of the identity that you assume today in the Church. From now on, you will be even more closely and intimately linked to the See of Peter: the titles and deaconries of the churches of Rome will remind you of the bond that joins you, as members by a very special title, to this Church of Rome, which presides in universal charity. Particularly through the work you do for the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, you will be my valued co-workers, first and foremost in my apostolic ministry for the fullness of catholicity, as Pastor of the whole flock of Christ and prime guarantor of its doctrine, discipline and morals.

Dear friends, let us praise the Lord, who “with manifold gifts does not cease to enrich his Church spread throughout the world” (Oration), and reinvigorates her in the perennial youth that he has bestowed upon her. To him we entrust the new ecclesial service of these our esteemed and venerable Brothers, that they may bear courageous witness to Christ, with a lively growing faith and unceasing sacrificial love. Amen.

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To the new Cardinals, their Families and Pilgrims present for the Consistory, Benedict XVI, 26 November 2012

ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY

FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

TO THE NEW CARDINALS, THEIR FAMILIES

AND PILGRIMS PRESENT FOR THE CONSISTORY

Paul VI Hall

Monday, 26 November 2012

Your Eminences,

Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,

Dear Friends,

Today, with our minds full of gratitude to the Lord, let us prolong the sentiments and emotions we experienced yesterday and the day before yesterday on the occasion of the creation of six new Cardinals. They were moments of intense prayer and of deep communion, experienced in the awareness of an event that concerns the universal Church, called to be a sign of hope for all peoples. I am therefore glad to welcome you today too, at this simple family meeting and to address my cordial greeting to the new Cardinals and likewise to their relatives, to their friends and to all who have accompanied them on this most solemn and important occasion.

I extend a cordial greeting to the English-speaking Prelates whom I had the joy of raising to the dignity of Cardinal in last Saturday’s Consistory: Cardinal James Michael Harvey, Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of St Paul’s Outside-the-Walls; Cardinal Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal, Major Archbishop of Trivandrum for Syro-Malankaras, India; Cardinal John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, Archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria; and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, the Philippines. I also welcome their family members and friends, and all the faithful who accompany them here today.

The College of Cardinals, whose origin is linked to the ancient clergy of the Roman Church, is charged with electing the Successor of Peter and advising him in matters of greater importance. Whether in the offices of the Roman Curia or in their ministry in the local Churches throughout the world, the Cardinals are called to share in a special way in the Pope’s solicitude for the universal Church. The vivid colour of their robes has traditionally been seen as a sign of their commitment to defending Christ’s flock even to the shedding of their blood. As the new Cardinals assume the burden of office, I am confident that they will be supported by your prayers and assistance as they strive with the Roman Pontiff to promote throughout the world the holiness, communion and peace of the Church.

I cordially greet the French-speaking Cardinals, and especially the Lebanese, in the happy memory of my recent Apostolic Visit to their country. I went there in particular to sign the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente. By creating Patriarch Béchara Boutros Raï a Cardinal I wish to give special encouragement to the life and presence of Christians in the Middle East, where they must be able to live their faith freely, and at the same time to launch a pressing appeal for peace in the region. The Church encourages every effort with a view to peace in the world and the Middle East, a peace which will only be effective if it is based on genuine respect for the other. May the Season of Advent, which is at our door, enable us to rediscover the greatness of Christ, true man and true God, who came into the world to save all people and to bring peace and reconciliation! I wish you all a fruitful pilgrimage!

I greet with deep affection Cardinal Rubén Salazar Gómez, Metropolitan Archbishop of Bogotá and President of the Bishops’ Conference of Colombia, and the relatives, bishops, priests, religious and lay people who have accompanied him and who share in his deep and spiritual joy at becoming a member of the College of Cardinals. I ask you all to raise fervent prayers for the new Cardinal that he may be increasingly united to the Successor of Peter and collaborate tirelessly with the Apostolic See. Let us also ask God to help him with his gifts, so that he may continue to bear witness to the truth of the Gospel of salvation, explaining its content with rectitude and faithfulness and bringing to all the redeeming strength of Christ. May Mary Most Holy, who in these noble regions is invoked under the sweet name of Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Chiquinquirá [Our Lady of the Rosary of Chiquinquirá], always support him with her motherly love, as well as all the beloved sons and daughters of Colombia, whom I keep very present in my heart and in my prayers, that they may advance in peace and harmony on the paths of justice, reconciliation and solidarity.

Dear and Venerable Brothers who have become members of the College of Cardinals! Your ministry is enriched by a new commitment in supporting the Successor of Peter in his universal service to the Church. Therefore, as I renew to each one of you my most cordial good wishes, I trust in the support of your prayers and in your precious help. May you continue confident and strong in your spiritual and apostolic mission, keeping your gaze fixed on Christ and strengthening your love for his Church. Moreover we can learn this love from the saints, who are the most complete realization of the Church: they loved her and, letting themselves be moulded by Christ, they spent their whole life to ensure that men and women might be illuminated by the light of Christ that shines out from the Church’s face (Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, n. 1). I invoke upon you and upon those present the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, and I warmly impart to you and to all those present a special Apostolic Blessing.

© Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Table of Contents

Introduction

Index of Source Links

Angelus

Angelus, 25 November 2012, Benedict XVI

General Audiences

General Audience of Pope Benedict XVI, 21 November 2012

Messages

Message on the occasion of the 17th Public Meeting of the Pontifical Academies, Benedict XVI, 21 November 2012

Motu Proprio

Apostolic Letter issued “Motu Proprio” On the Service of Charity, 11 November 2012 - Benedict XVI

Speeches

To a group of bishops of the French Episcopal Conference on their ad Limina visit, Benedict XVI, 17 November 2012

To participants in the World Congress of the Apostleship of the Sea, Benedict XVI, 23 November 2012

Papal Mass on the occasion of the Ordinary Public Consistory for the creation of new cardinals, Address of Benedict XVI, 24 November 2012

To the new Cardinals, their Families and Pilgrims present for the Consistory, Benedict XVI, 26 November 2012