Serving together

Welcoming addresses, blessings and prayers punctuated the audience granted by Benedict XVI to the newly elected cardinals, together with their friends and family members, in the Vatican on 27 March. During the audience, which concluded the three-day Consistory, the first of his pontificate, Benedict XVI welcomed the new cardinals one by one, and expressed his thanks to each of them. “In renewing my brotherly greetings to you – declared the Pope – I wish to assure you that I will continue to accompany you with my prayer. The meetings of the College of Cardinals as a whole with the Successor of Peter, as happened last Thursday, will continue to be privileged occasions to seek together how better to serve the Church entrusted to our care by Christ”. To the cardinals of English mother tongue, none of them European, namely, William Levada, Gaudencio Rosales, Nicholas Cheong Jin-suk, Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, Peter Dery and Sean O’Malley, the Pope renewed his “brotherly greetings” and offered prayers for their mission at the service of the universal Church”. ITALY. “You are surrounded, venerated Brothers – said the Pope to the new Italian cardinals Agostino Vallini (Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura), Carlo Caffarra (Archbishop of Bologna) and Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo (Arch-Priest of the Basilica of St. Paul-outside-the-walls, Rome) – by so many persons dear to you whose presence, apart from being a sign of friendship and affection, is also a visible expression of the benevolent communion that animates the Church. May the Lord make each of you an ever-more generous witness of his love!”. FRANCE. Benedict XVI welcomed the French cardinals Jean-Pierre Ricard, Archbishop of Bordeaux, and the Jesuit Albert Vanhoye, former Rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute and Secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. He thanked Cardinal Vanhoye in particular for his “fruitful exegetical work” to the benefit of “numerous generations of youth” by offering them “the means to live the Gospel and become witnesses of it”. To them the Pope expressed the hope: “May you have time to nourish yourself with the Scriptures”. SPAIN. Benedict XVI addressed a special greeting to the Spaniard Antonio Cañizares Llovera, cardinal of Toledo, combining it with that for the Venezuelan Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino (Caracas). “Your peoples – said the Holy Father – are distinguished by fidelity to the Successor of Peter”. He also praised Cañizares Llovera for his pastoral work in the cities of Avila and Granada. POLAND. Benedict did not fail to speak of his memories of John Paul II in welcoming “our beloved” Cardinal Stanislao Dziwisz” (John Paul’s former private secretary). To him the Pope expressed “gratitude for all the past years” at the side of Karol Wojtyla and for “everything that this service has contributed to the Church”. SLOVENIA. “A cordial welcome” was also extended to Cardinal Franc Rodé, representative of the Slovene Church, who in his role as Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life “offers his contribution to the mission of the Apostolic See”. The richness of collegiality The Consistory held in recent days was “a moving ecclesial experience that permitted us to experience the spiritual richness of collegiality”, declared Benedict XVI in his introductory remarks before the recitation of the Angelus, on the 4th Sunday of Lent, 26 March. The Pope was referring to the Consistory held on 24 March during which fifteen new Cardinals were nominated, chosen from every part of the world. The collegial experience of meeting together as brothers, of various provenance, all of them brought together by the common bond of the one love for Christ and for his Church, reminded the Holy Father of “the reality of the initial Christian community, gathered around Mary, Mother of Jesus, and Peter, to accept the gift of the Spirit and pledge to spread the Gospel throughout the world”. In some way the community reality of the Church of the apostles was reproduced during the short time of the present Consistory, during which the Pope listened to the voice of the Cardinals, who are his close aides. He also referred to their apostolic mission, indicating both its risks and its nature. Fidelity to this mission, he said, to the point of the sacrifice of life, is a distinctive characteristic of cardinals, as attested by their oath and as symbolized by the colour purple, which has the colour of blood. And, indeed, the bright red of the cardinal’s robes indicates not so much the undoubted merits of those who wear them, as their total dedication to the service of the Church.