"At this time, I would like to thank heartily the Lord and all of you", said yesterday morning Benedict XVI at the end of the sermon at Mass for his 80th birthday. "I would like to end this sermon he added with the prayer of the Holy Pope Leo the Great, that prayer that just thirty years ago I wrote on the picture-keepsake of my consecration as a bishop: “Pray our good God, that He may want in our time to strengthen our faith, multiply love and increase peace. May He make me, His humble servant, adequate to his task and useful to your edification and let me fulfil my task so that, along with the time He gave me, my devotion may grow". The Pope also greeted "all those people who have come here to celebrate this birthday with me", the cardinals, "with special thankfulness to the dean of the College of Cardinals", card. Angelo Sodano, who spoke in tribute to the Holy Father, the archbishops and the bishops, the prelates, the priests and nuns, the congregation, the politicians and the members of the Diplomatic Corps, who were at Mass. A greeting "with brotherly affection" to the personal envoy of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, Ioannis, metropolitan bishop of Pergamum, to whom he expressed the wish that "theological dialogue between the Catholics and the Orthodox may continue with fresh vigour".
