Pope's plea for religious Sundays

[Stan]

Barbara McMahon in Rome

Monday May 30, 2005

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1495370,00.html

Pope Benedict XVI, in his first trip outside Rome since being elected,

was greeted by enthusiastic crowds in the southern Italian city of Bari

yesterday.

At an outdoor mass attended by an estimated 200,000 people, he called for

the rediscovery of the religious meaning of Sundays as an antidote to the

"rampant consumerism and religious indifference" that was making the

modern world a spiritual desert.

The 78-year-old pontiff also pledged to make Christian unity a priority.

He reminded the congregation that the coastal city of Bari, which looks

east across the Adriatic, was a symbol of the common ground that Orthodox

and Catholic Christians share.

The Pope flew from Rome by helicopter for a three-and-a-half hour visit.

Security was tight, with hundreds of police in the streets, city centre

closed to traffic and coastal waters closed to private vessels.

Returning to Rome, the Pope's helicopter swept low over the pilot's home

town of Duronia so that the Pope could bless residents gathered on a

sports field, according to the Ansa news agency.

The Pope is due to travel to his native Germany in August to attend World

Youth Day celebrations.And unification of churches. Source for above

article;

[Dr. Shane]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr />

he called for the rediscovery of the religious meaning of Sundays as an antidote to the "rampant consumerism and religious indifference" that was making the modern world a spiritual desert.

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And he is right. Of course we know what it will lead to. Nonetheless, if more churches stressed the importance of their day of rest and more people observed it we would have much less secularism in the world. But we know the world is not our home and that these things must come to pass.