VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday blessed a statue of the founder of the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei, saying he hoped it will serve as inspiration for those who passed by to "do one’s daily work in the spirit of Christ."<\/p>\n
The 20-foot-tall white Carrara marble statue, placed in a niche of the outside wall of St. Peter’s Basilica, depicts Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer with his hands open in a welcoming gesture and two cherubs at his feet holding a sculpted Bible. Balaguer founded Opus Dei in Spain in 1928.<\/p>\n
" Now if he had blessed a statue of an albino Opus Dei monk assassin, that would have been news. Of course it would also be news if.Opus Dei actually had any monks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday blessed a statue of the founder of the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei, saying he hoped it will serve as inspiration for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMay all those who stop to contemplate the statue be encouraged to live their daily work in the spirit of Christ and in ardent love for the work of redemption," said Benedict, who stopped to bless the statue at the end of his general audience before returning to Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence in the Alban hills outside Rome. [Source<\/a>]<\/p>\n