"Everything in our life begins with an encounter", he continued. "Let us
think of the Gospel of John, in which he narrates the disciples' first
encounter with Jesus. Andrew, John and Simon felt as if they were seen in
depth, known intimately, and this generated surprise in them, a stupor that
immediately made them feel linked to Him. ... This was the decisive discovery
for St. Paul, for St. Augustine, and many others: Jesus Christ always precedes
us; when we arrive, He is already waiting for us. He is like the flower of the
almond tree, the first to bloom and to herald the spring".
 However, this dynamic of encounter that arouses stupor and adhesion without
mercy, as "only he who has known the tender caress of mercy truly knows the
Lord. The privileged locus of encounter is the caress of Jesus Christ's mercy
towards my sin. It is for this reason that, at times, you have heard me say
that the privileged locus of encounter with Jesus Christ is sin. It is thanks
to that merciful embrace that the wish to respond and to change emerges, and
from this there springs a different life. Christian morality is not a titanic
and voluntary effort on the part of those who decide to be coherent and
achieve it, a sort of solitary challenge before the world. No. Christian
morality is the answer, it is the touched response when faced with the
surprising mercy, unpredictable, even 'unjust' according to human criteria, of
One who knows me, Who knows my betrayals and loves me all the same, ... who
calls me again, has hope in me. ... Christian morality is not about never
falling, but about always getting up again, thanks to His hand that reaches
out to us".
 "And the way of the Church is also this: letting God's great mercy be shown",
he exclaimed. "The road of the Church is that of never condemning anyone
eternally; of effusing God's mercy to all those people who ask for it with a
sincere heart; the road of the Church is precisely that of leaving behind
one's own yard in order to go and seek those in the distant peripheries of
existence; that of fully adopting God's logic. The Church too must feel the
joyful impulse of becoming almond flowers, like Jesus, for all humanity".
 Returning to the celebration of sixty years of Communion and Liberation, the
Pope emphasised that after this time the "original charism" has lost neither
its freshness nor its vitality. "But, always remember that there is only one
centre: Jesus Christ. When I put at the centre my spiritual method, my
spiritual path, my way of putting it into practice, I stray from the road. All
the spirituality, all the charisms in the Church must be decentred: at the
centre there is only the Lord!".
 He continued, "Charism cannot be conserved in a bottle of distilled water!
Loyalty to the charism does not mean 'petrifying' it - it is the devil who
petrifies - does not mean writing it on parchment and framing it. Reference to
the legacy that Don Giussani has left you cannot be reduced to a museum of
memories, of decisions made, of norms of conduct. It certainly involves
faithfulness to tradition, but as Mahler said, this means 'keeping the flame
alive and not worshipping the ashes'. Don Giussani would never forgive you if
you lost your freedom and transformed into museum guides or worshippers of
ashes. Keep alive the memory of that first encounter and be free! In this way,
centre in Christ and in the Gospel, you can be the arms, hands, feet, mind and
heart of an outbound Church. The path of the Church takes us out in search of
those who are far away, in the peripheries, to serve Jesus in every
marginalised and abandoned person, without faith, disappointed in the Church,
prisoner of his or her own self-centredness".
 "Reaching out also means rejecting self-referentiality, in all its forms; it
means knowing how to listen to those who are not the same as us, learning from
all, with sincere humility. When we are slaves to self-referentiality we end
up cultivating a sort of branded spirituality: 'I am CL'. This becomes your
label. And in this way we fall into the myriad traps set by self-referential
complacency, that gazing at oneself in the mirror that leads to disorientation
and our transformation into mere impresarios of NGOs".
 The Pope concluded his discourse with the words of Don Giussani, from one of
his first writings, in which he affirmed that Christianity cannot be realised
in history as fixed position to defend, that relate to the new in terms of
pure antithesis, and from his letter to John Paul II in 2004 on the occasion
of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Communion and Liberation: 'I
never intended to "found" anything. I believe that the genius of the movement
that I have seen come into being is that of having grasped the urgency of
proclaiming the need to return to the elementary aspects of Christianity,
meaning passion for Christianity as such, in its original elements, and
nothing more'."

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 The Holy Father to preside at Confession in St. Peter's Basilica on 13 March
 Vatican City, 7 March 2015 (VIS) - The Office of Liturgical Celebrations of
the Supreme Pontiff today announced that the Holy Father will preside at the
rite of the reconciliation of penitents, with individual confession and
absolution, on Friday 13 March at 5 p.m in St. Peter's Basilica.

___________________________________________________________

 Oath-taking Ceremony of the Cardinal Camerlengo
 Vatican City, 7 March 2015 (VIS) - At 9.30 this morning, in the Chapel of
Urban VIII, in the presence of the Holy Father, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran,
president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, took his oath
as Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church.

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 Cardinal Orlando B. Quevedo, Pope's special envoy to Nagasaki
 Vatican City, 7 March 2015 (VIS) - In a letter published today, written in
Latin and dated 15 February, the Holy Father appoints Cardinal Orlando B.
Quevedo, O.M.I., archbishop of Cotabato, Philippines, as his special envoy to
the celebration of the centenary of the discovery of the "hidden Christians of
Japan", to be held in Nagasaki, Japan from 14 to 17 March.
 The mission accompanying the cardinal will be composed of Rev. Peter Sakae
Kojima, vicar general, member of the college of consultors and parish priest
of the Cathedral of Nagasaki, and Fr. Joseph Pasala, S.V.D., missionary from
India and parish vicar of Nishimachi.

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 Audiences
 Vatican City, 9 March 2015 (VIS) - Today, the Holy Father received in
audience:
 - Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church;
 - Fourteen prelates of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea, on their
"ad Limina" visit:
 - Archbishop Hyginus Kim Hee-joong of Gwangju, with his auxiliary, Bishop
Simon Ok Hyun-jin;
 - Bishop Peter Kang U-il of Cheju;
 - Bishop Vincent Ri Pyung-ho of Jeonju;
 - Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, archbishop of Seoul, apostolic administrator
"sede vacante et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis" of P'youg-yang with his auxiliaires,
Bishop Basil Cho Kyu-man, BishopTimothy Yu Gyoung-chon, and Bishop Peter Chung
Soon-taek;
 - Bishop Luke Kim Woon-hoe of Ch'unch,?n, apostolic administrator "sede
vacante et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis" of Hamh?ng;
 - Bishop Lazzaro You Heung-sik of Daejeon, with his auxiliary, Bishop
Augustinus Kim Jong-soo;
 - Bishop Boniface Choi Ki-san, with his auxiliary, Bishop John Baptist Jung
Shin-chul; and
 - Dom Blasio Park Hyun-dong, O.S.B., apostolic administrator "ad nutum
Sanctae Sedis" of the dell'Abbazia di T?kwon
 On Saturday, 7 March, the Holy Father received in audience Cardinal Marc
Ouellet, P.S.S., prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

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 Other Pontifical Acts
 On Saturday, 7 March, the Holy Father:
 - appointed Rev. Fr. David Macaire, O.P., as archbishop of Fort-de-France
(area 1,080, population 390,371, Catholics 312,296, priests 54, permanent
deacons 12, religious 151), Martinique, France. The bishop-elect was born in
Nanterre, France in 1969, gave his perpetual vows in 1998 and was ordained a
priest in 2001. He holds a licentiate in theology and canon law from Tolosa,
and has served in a number of pastoral roles, including chaplain of various
schools, lecturer in theology at the major seminary of Bordeaux, spiritual
adviser of the Equipe Notre Dame, master of Dominican students, prior of the
Dominican convent in the archdiocese of Bordeaux, and member of the
presbyteral council of the same local Church. He is currently prior of the
Dominican convent of La Sainte-Baume, Tolone, and member of the provincial
council.
 - accepted the resignation from the office of auxiliary of the diocese of
Rome presented by Bishop Paolo Schiavon, upon reaching the age limit.

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