VATICAN - The month of May, coinciding with the Easter Season “can be an opportunity to return to the faith of the early Church and, united with Mary, realise that still today our mission is to courageously and joyfully announce and bear witness to Christ crucified and risen”: Pope Benedict XVI at the Regina Cæli

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - On Sunday 6 May in his reflection before the recitation of the midday Marian hymn Regina Caeli, Pope Benedict XVI dwelt on traditional devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the month of May which coincides with the Easter Season, the season of the beginning of the Church. For many Christian communities the month of May “is the Marian month par excellence” the Holy Father said recalling that down through the centuries this devotion, one of the most loved, was valued “as a good time for preaching, catechesis and community prayer”. Vatican II also highlighted the role of the Most Holy Mary in the Church and in the history of salvation and consequently following that ecclesial event “Marian devotion was profoundly renewed ”. The Pope continued: “ The month of May, coinciding at least in part with the Easter Season, is a good time for illustrating the figure of Mary as Mother who accompanies the community of the disciples joined with one heart in prayer awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit (cfr Acts 1,12-14). This month, therefore, can be a good opportunity to return to the faith of the early Church and, united with Mary, realise that still today our mission is to courageously and joyfully announce and bear witness to Christ crucified and risen”.
The Pope entrusted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church his visit to Brazil, 9 - 14 May, the Pope's first apostolic journey to Latin America “Like my venerable Predecessors Oaul VI and John Paul II, I will preside the inauguration of a General Conference of the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Fifty which will start next Sunday at the great national Shrine of Nuestra Senora Aparecida, in the city of that name. Before this I will visit the nearby city of Sao Paulo where I will meet some young people and the country's Bishops and have the joy of canonising Blessed Fra Antonio de Sant’Anna Galvão”. Pope Benedict XVI also recalled that almost half the world's Catholics live in Latin America and many of them young people “this is why it is also called the ‘Continent of hope: hope which concerns not only the Church but the whole of America and the world.” He asked people to accompany his pilgrimage and the Conference and for the Christians of that part of the world that they may truly feel they are disciples and missionaries of Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life ”. In the face of the many challenges of the present moment, “it is important for Christians to be formed to "leaven" of goodness and "light" of holiness in our world”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 7/5/2007; righe 30, parole 458)