VATICAN - At the tomb of St Paul the Apostle Pope Benedict XVI re-launches the urgency of mission: “At the beginning of the third millennium, the Church senses with new vividness that the missionary mandate of Christ is more timely than ever”

Vatican City (Fides Service) - “The Church is by nature missionary, her principal task is evangelisation...At the beginning of the third millennium, the Church senses with new vividness that the missionary mandate of Christ is more timely than ever”, the Holy Father Benedict XVI said yesterday afternoon, Monday 25 April, when he visited the Basilica of St Paul on the Ostian way. With this visit to the tomb of the Saint Paul the Apostle “the roots of mission” the day after the Mass for the solemn inauguration of his ministry as Bishop of Rome and successor of St Peter” the Pope wished to highlight the inseparable bond which unites the Church in Rome with the Apostle of the Nations and the Fisherman from Galilee.
“This is for me a long desired pilgrimage, an act of faith which I make on my own behalf and also in the name of the beloved diocese of Rome of which the Lord has made me Bishop and Shepherd, and of the universal Church entrusted to my pastoral care - the Pope said -. A pilgrimage so to say to the roots of mission, the mission which the Risen Christ entrusted to Peter, the other apostles in a singular way also to Paul, leading him to proclaim the Gospel to the nations even as far as this city where, after preaching at length the Kingdom of God, with his blood he rendered supreme witness to his Lord who had won his heart and sent him out.”
Benedict XVI recalled the example of his “beloved and venerated predecessor John Paul II, a missionary Pope, whose intense activity demonstrated by more than one hundred apostolic journeys beyond the borders of Italy is truly inimitable”, and he asked the Lord to give him a love similar, “that, faced with the urgency of the proclamation of the Gospel to the world of today I will not rest”. After quoting the decree “Ad gentes” which Vatican II dedicated to missionary activity, the Pope said: “At the beginning of the third millennium, the Church senses with new vividness that the missionary mandate of Christ is more timely than ever. The Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 led the Church to ‘start afresh from Christ’, contemplated in prayer so that the light of his truth might be radiated to all men and women first of all through witness of holiness.”
St Paul made Christ “the centre of his life” and “his passion for Christ led him to preach the Gospel not only in word but with his life, ever more closely conformed to his Lord. In the end Paul proclaimed Christ with martyrdom, and his blood and that of Peter and many other witnesses of the Gospel watered this land and the Church of Rome was made fecund”. The Pope recalled that the 20th century was a “time of martyrdom” to which Pope John Paul II gave special attention. “If therefore the blood of martyrs is seed of Christians, at the beginning of the third millennium we can rightly expect a new flourishing of the Church, in a special way there where she has suffered most for the faith and for witness to the Gospel”. Lastly Benedict XVI asked God through the intercession of St Paul to give the Church in Rome, its Bishop and the entire People of God “the joy of proclaiming and bearing witness to the Good News of Christ the Saviour”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 26/4/2005; righe 35, parole 531)