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Ärende: Vatican Information Service - Press Release
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                               VIS-Press releases

BRING TOGETHER ACCEPTANCE, DIALOGUE AND RESPECT

VATICAN CITY, JUN 17, 2007 (VIS) - At 8.30 a.m. today, following an hour-long
helicopter journey from the Vatican, the Pope arrived in the Italian town of
Assisi to begin a visit commemorating the eighth centenary of the conversion of
St. Francis.

After a brief visit to the Shrine of Rivotorto, where St. Francis lived for two
years with his first followers, the Holy Father travelled to the Shrine of St.
Damian. From there he journeyed by car to the Basilica of St. Clare where he
prayed before the Blessed Sacrament and venerated the crucifix of St. Damian
where St. Francis heard the words that changed his life: "Go, Francis, and
repair my house."

At 10 a.m., Benedict XVI presided at a Eucharistic concelebration in the Lower
Square of St. Francis.

In his homily the Holy Father considered the figure of St. Francis, who in his
first 25 years of life "pursued vain dreams of worldly glory." However, "his
conversion led him to practice mercy. ... Serving lepers even to the point of
kissing them was not only a philanthropic gesture - what might be called a
'social' conversion - but a true religious experience, directed by the
initiative of grace and by the love of God."

"To convert ourselves to love is to pass from bitterness to 'sweetness,' from
sadness to true joy. Humans are truly themselves, and realize themselves fully,
in as much as they live with God and of God, recognizing and loving Him in
their fellow man."

"The life of the converted Francis," said the Pope, was "a great act of love,"
as is shown by "his choice of poverty and his search for Christ in the face of
the poor."

Francis was "a true master" in the "search for peace, the protection of nature,
and the promotion of dialogue among mankind," said the Holy Father and he
recalled John Paul II's initiative that brought together representatives from
Christian confessions and from other religions of the world for a meeting of
prayer for peace in Assisi in 1986. "That was," said Pope Benedict, "a
prophetic intuition and a moment of grace."

"The light of the 'Poverello' on that initiative was a guarantee of its
Christian authenticity," said the Pope, "because his life and his message are
so visibly founded upon his choice of Christ. What must be rejected a priori is
any form of religious indifferentism, which has no connection with authentic
inter-religious dialogue.

"The spirit of Assisi," Pope Benedict added, "which from that [1986 initiative]
continues to spread out around the world, is opposed to the spirit of violence
and to the abuse of religion as a pretext for violence. Assisi tells us that
faithfulness to one's own religious convictions, faithfulness above all to the
crucified and risen Christ, is not expressed in violence and intolerance but in
sincere respect for others, in dialogue, and in an announcement that appeals to
freedom and reason while remaining committed to peace and reconciliation.

"Failing to bring together acceptance, dialogue and respect for everyone with
the certainty of faith that all Christians, like the saint of Assisi, are
called to cultivate, would be neither evangelical nor Franciscan," the Pope
concluded. We must all "announce Christ as the way, the truth and the life of
man; the only Savior of the world."
PV-ITALY/MASS/ASSISIVIS 070618 (560)

SUMMARY

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