"God’s love has this power: to renew anything, first and foremost man’s heart, which is His masterpiece and in which the Holy Spirit works its transforming effect in the best possible way. Through His grace, God renews man’s heart by forgiving his sin, reconciles him and imbues a surge for goodness into him. All this is manifested in the life of the Saints, and we can see that here especially in the apostolic work of the blessed Bartolo Longo, the founder of the new Pompeii". This was said yesterday morning by Benedict XVI, who, "in the footsteps of the Servant of God John Paul II, went "on a pilgrimage to Pompeii to worship, with you, the Virgin, the Queen of the Holy Rosary". Of course, pointed out the Pope in the Eucharistic celebration, one must be "consistently renewed" "not to fall back into the conformism of a earthly mentality". Love must actually be the constant plan of a Christian community. And "the new Pompeii, despite the limits that are typical of any human reality, is an example" of that new civilisation of love "that rose and grew under Mary’s motherly eyes". Pompeii is "a citadel of Mary and charity, not one isolated from the world, not, as one would say, like a ‘cathedral in the desert’ but one that fits in with the territory of this Valley, to redeem and promote it". (continued)” “
