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Vatican City,
9th May 2005 (CNA)
- On Friday, Pope Benedict XVI formally took
possession of St. John Lateran Cathedral,
confirming his position as Bishop of the Diocese
of Rome.
Some forty cardinals, members of the
diocesan episcopal council, canons of the Lateran
Basilica and the council of pastor prefects
concelebrated Mass at the Basilica with the Holy
Father.
Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar general of
the diocese of Rome, opened the celebration,
expressing his joy as Rome received her new
pastor. The Pope then sat in his “cathedra”,
literally “chair” for the first time as the choir
and congregation sang: "Joy, peace and life to you
Benedict, bishop of Rome."
The Pope then received expressions of
"obedience" from a representatives of the Roman
Church, including, Cardinal Ruini in his capacity
as archpriest of the basilica of St. John Lateran;
Archbishop Luigi Moretti, vicegerent of the
diocese; two priests; a permanent deacon and a
deacon preparing for the priesthood.
He also received a male and a female
religious, a layman and laywoman, as well as two
young people who had received the rite of
Confirmation.
In his homily, the Holy Father spoke of the
Ascension of the Lord, which was celebrated in
many places around the world Sunday, saying that
Christ, "thanks to His being with the Father, is
close to each of us forever.”
“Each of us”, he said, “can address Him as
a friend, each of us can call on Him." Although
"we can live with our backs turned to Him, He
always awaits us, He is always close to
us."
Pope Benedict said that the Risen Christ
"has need of witnesses who have met Him, of men
and women who have known Him intimately through
the power of the Holy Spirit. ... The successors
to the Apostles - that is, the bishops - have the
public responsibility to ensure that the network
of this testimony endures over time. ... And in
this network of witnesses, a special task falls to
Peter's Successor."
The Pope, he said, "must be aware that he
is a weak and fragile man," in constant need of
"purification and conversion. Yet he may also be
aware that from the Lord comes the strength to
confirm his brothers and sisters in the faith, and
to keep them united in confessing the Crucified
and Risen Christ."
He added that, "The bishop of Rome sits in
his cathedra to bear witness to Christ. Thus the
cathedra is the symbol of the 'potestas docendi,'
that authority to teach which is an essential part
of the mandate to bind and to loosen conferred by
the Lord on Peter and, after him, on the Twelve."
Regarding this, Pope Benedict noted that,
"where Holy Scripture is disjoined from the living
voice of the Church, it falls prey to the disputes
of experts."
"This authority to teach,” he said,
“frightens many people, both within and outside
the Church. They ask themselves whether it does
not threaten freedom of belief, whether it is not
a presumption that goes against freedom of
thought.”
The Pope sought to put minds at rest
saying, “It is not so. ... The Pope is not an
absolute sovereign whose thoughts and will are
law. Quite the contrary, the ministry of the Pope
is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to His
Word.”
“He must not proclaim his own ideas,”
Benedict added, “but constantly bind himself and
the Church in obedience to God's Word in the face
of all attempts to adapt that Word or to water it
down, and in the face of all forms of
opportunism."
The Pope stressed that this is what John
Paul II did "when, in the face of all apparently
benevolent attempts, in the face of erroneous
interpretations of freedom, he unequivocally
underlined the inviolability of the human being,
the inviolability of human life from conception to
natural death.”
“The freedom to kill is not true freedom,
but a tyranny that reduces human beings to
slavery."
The Holy Father said that, "The Pope is
aware of being bound - in his important decisions
- to the great community of the faith of all
times, to the binding interpretations that have
developed during the Church's pilgrim journey."
He has the responsibility to ensure that
the Word of God "continues to be present in its
greatness and to sound forth in its purity, so
that it is not dismembered by constant changes in
fashion."
Concluding his homily, the Pope assured
members of the Roman diocese: "Now I am your
bishop. Thank you for your generosity! Thank you
for your kindness! Thank you for your patience! As
Catholics we are all, in some way, also
Romans."
Following the Mass, Pope Benedict traveled
in an open car to the basilica of St. Mary Major
to venerate the "Salus Populi Romani", an icon of
the Virgin Mary, which is conserved in the
Borghese Chapel.
This historic act of veneration by the new
Pope represents what the Vatican calls, “an
unbroken tradition of supplication by the people
of Rome to the Mother of
Salvation.”
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