Subject: VISnews140312
From: Vatican Information Service - Eng - txt 


 VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE
YEAR XXII - # 49
DATE 12-03-2014

Summary:
 - FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF POPE FRANCIS' PONTIFICATE
 - NOTICE

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FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF POPE FRANCIS' PONTIFICATE
Vatican City, 12 March 2014 (VIS) -; Tomorrow, 13 March, will be the
first anniversary of the election of Pope Francis to the See of St. Peter.
These 365 days of his papacy have been characterised as a "time of
mercy", as described by the Pope himself. During these twelve months of
intense activity, the Pope "from the end of the earth" who asks us
to pray for him, has started out on a new way of working that, with a slow but
sure pace, has drawn renewed attention to issues not only of an ecclesiastical
nature. The "priest of the world", as his special secretary Msgr.
Alfred Xuereb calls him, "has not wasted a minute! He works tirelessly
and, when he feels the need to take a moment's pause, he closes his eyes and
does nothing: he simply sits and prays the Rosary".
To commemorate this first anniversary, the director of the Holy See Press
Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., gave an interview with Vatican Radio in
which he reflects on this year and its "great impulse to a journeying
Church".
"The most important aspect of this first year is without doubt the great
attention, the great attraction of the people -; I say the people,
meaning not only practising Catholics, but everyone in this world -; the
great attention for this Pope, for his message. It is something that I think
and hope is very deeply rooted in the heart of the people, who have felt
touched by a word of love, attention, mercy, closeness, proximity, in which
through the man, the Pope, the love of God arrives".
"The Church truly seems to be a journeying people. This is her most
characteristic aspect: a sense of great dynamism. The Pope has given a great
impulse and journeys with a Church that seeks God's will, that seeks her
mission in today's world for the good of all, truly going out to the
peripheries, to the ends of the world", he continues, adding that there
are "manifestations of attention, therefore, that come from places, from
atypical organs of the press", that "mean that his message reaches
its target".

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NOTICE
Vatican City, 12 March 2014 (VIS) -; We inform our readers that tomorrow,
Thursday 13 March, the first anniversary of the election to the pontificate of
the Holy Father Francis, no bulletin will be transmitted. The service will
resume on Friday, 14 March.

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