"Convert and believe in the Gospel": Jesus, said the Pope yesterday at the Angelus prayer, "began his public life with this call, which keeps resounding through the Church, so much that even the Most Holy Virgin, in her apparitions, especially the most recent ones, has always repeated this call". "Today went on Benedict XVI we are thinking in particular of Fatima where just 90 years ago, from 13th May to 13th October 1917, the Virgin appeared to the three little shepherds: Lucia, Giacinta and Francesco". The Holy Father said, live from Rome, "I would like to be spiritually present in that Marian sanctuary, where card. Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State, has officiated on my behalf the final celebrations of such a significant anniversary". After "warmly greeting him, the other cardinals and bishops who were there, the priests who work in the Sanctuary and the pilgrims who arrived from all over the world for the occasion", the Pope raised a prayer to the Virgin to ask her "for the gift of a true conversion for all Christians, so that the perennial message of the Gospel, which shows to mankind the way to true peace, may be consistently and faithfully announced and testified".
