“It’s a great honour for our country that the authority of the universal Church has chosen the Maltese islands, the islands of St. Paul, for a meeting that will bring together hundreds of priests from all over the world. But it’s not only an honour. It’s also a particularly challenging responsibility”. The point is made by the archbishop of Malta, Msgr. Joseph Mecieca, and the bishop of Gozo, Msgr. Nicholas J. Cauchi, in a pastoral letter to the population issued to announce that the international conference “Priests, forgers of saints for the new millennium. In the footsteps of the apostle Paul” will be held in the islands of Malta and Gozo from 18 to 23 October. The theme of the conference, now in its sixth year, promoted as usual by the Congregation for the Clergy and by the Roman mission-aid society for pilgrimages, “is inseparably bound up with our priestly mission continue the bishops that consists in trying to achieve holiness and helping others to become saints”. In spite of “the sin that blights the life of many and represents an obstacle to the mission of the Church”, that mission is, at the same time, a “school of humility”. Apart from an address by the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Darío Castrillòn Hoyos, who will also officiate the solemn opening mass in the co-cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Valletta on 18 October, the conference will include interventions by the theologian Bruno Forte, the preacher of the Pontifical Household Father Raniero Cantalamessa, and several cardinals, including the archbishops of Lviv of the Latins (Ukraine) Marian Jaworsky, of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, of Bombay Ivan Dias, and of Berlin Georg Maximilian Sterzinsky. Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano will officiate the concluding liturgy in the Marian sanctuary of Ta’ Pinu on Gozo on 22 October.
