"Promoting and supporting, in the Church as well as in the world of culture and arts, a renewed, generous project of Christian humanism, able to appropriately respond to the cultural and religious challenges with which the men and women of this time are confronted every day". This is the "specific objective" pointed out to the Papal Academies in the "special address" read on behalf of the Holy Father by card. Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State to the participants in the eleventh public session of these Vatican bodies, which took place today in the new Synod room about "The Virgin, the Mother of all men, the icon of God’s beauty and love". The Church, went on Bertone, “like Mary, is called to welcome the Son of God in the history and in the vicissitudes of every people and culture". Thus Mary becomes "fundamental" for Christian "thought", as John Paul II wrote in the Letter to the priests for Maundy Thursday of 1995. (to be continued)
