Text 2223, 57 rader
Skriven 2007-02-22 07:07:24 av Marc Lewis (1:396/45)
Ärende: Vatican Information Service - Press Release
===================================================
Hello All!
                This Area is READ ONLY.  Do not post to this area.
                The following press release is Copyrighted by the
                          Vatican Information Service.
                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                               VIS-Press releases

MESSAGE FOR THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF ST. PETER DAMIAN

VATICAN CITY, FEB 21, 2007 (VIS) - Made public today was a Message from the
Pope to Fr. Guido Innocenzo Gargano, superior of the Roman monastery of San
Gregorio al Celio and to all members of the Camaldolese Order, for the occasion
of the 1000th anniversary of the birth St. Peter Damian, whose feast day falls
today.

In his Message, dated February 20, the Holy Father writes that this anniversary
"is an appropriate occasion to give more profound consideration to the aspects
characterizing the saint's multifaceted personality as scholar, hermit, man of
the Church and, above all, enamoured of Christ."

"St. Peter Damian," he continues, "was first and foremost a hermit, indeed the
last theoretician of hermitic life in the Latin Church," who lived "at the very
moment when the schism between East and West came about."

After highlighting how for St. Peter Damian "the hermit's life was a powerful
call for all Christians to the primacy of Christ," Pope Benedict recalls that
this Italian saint "was ready to travel from his hermitage and go anywhere his
presence was necessary to mediate between contending parties, whether they were
ecclesiastics, monks or simple faithful."

"After each ecclesiastical mission he returned to the peace of his hermitage of
Fonte Avellana and, free of all ambition, even definitively renounced the
dignity of the cardinalate so as not to be drawn away from his hermit's
solitude, the cell of his hidden life in Christ."

The Holy Father also recalls that St. Peter Damian was "the soul of the
'Gregorian reform' which marked the passage from the first millennium to the
second and of which Pope St. Gregory VII was the heart and the driving force."

"With the pen and the word" the saint addressed "his hermit confreres,
demanding the courage of a radical commitment to the Lord, as near as possible
to martyrdom." He called on "Popes, bishops and high-ranking prelates to show
evangelical detachment from honors and privileges in carrying out their
ecclesial functions," and he reminded "priests of the exalted ideal of their
mission, to be exercised with purity of private life and true individual
poverty."

St. Peter Damian's was aware "that only through a constant harmonic tension
between the two fundamental poles of life - solitude and communion - can
effective Christian testimony develop. Is not this," the Pope concludes, "also
a valid teaching for our own times."
MESS/ST. PETER DAMIAN/GARGANOVIS 070221 (410)

SUMMARY

--- MPost/386 v1.21
 * Origin: Sursum Corda! BBS =Meridian, MS= bbs.sursum-corda.com (1:396/45)