“ Communicating the Gospel in a changing world”: that is the title of the Pastoral Guidelines of the Italian episcopate for the first decade of the new millennium…”. “taking a realistic look at the context in which we are called to offer our witness”: that is how Card. Camillo Ruini, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, summed up the basic objective of the new document in his presentation. Its aim, he said, is to be a kind of “Italian reading” of “Novo millennnio ineunte”, the Apostolic Letter written by the Pope at the end of the Jubilee of the year 2000. In the document, the Italian bishops declare their desire to offer “a word of hope” to the society of our time, and urge “the Christians of our country to rediscover, together with all men and women of good will, the invisible threads of history, thanks to which nothing is lost in history and everything may be redeemed and acquire a meaning”. The first part of the CEI’s pastoral guidelines is dedicated to Christ, while the second contains an analysis of the Italian cultural environment, with some recommendations for the communication of the Christian message.
