Vatican City, (Zenit.org) | 188 hits
At 12 o’clock today, in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Vatican Palace, Pope Francis received participants of the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. After the address of the Congregation Prefect, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Pope Francis gave the following address which Zenit translates below.
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Dear Brothers and Sisters,
“Christ is the light of the peoples”: so exhorts the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. From East to West the whole Church renders this testimony to the Son of God; this Church that, as the same conciliar text evidences immediately, “is present in every nation of the earth […], in fact, all the faithful scattered throughout the world are in communion in the Holy Spirit” (n. 13). “Thus, it then adds, quoting John Chrysostom – one who is at Rome knows that the Indians are her members” (Homily on John 65, 1: PG 59, 361).
The memorable Second Vatican Council also had the merit of explicitly mentioning that in the ancient liturgies of the Oriental Churches, in their theology, spirituality and canonical discipline ‘there remains conspicuous the tradition that has been handed down from the Apostles through the Fathers and that forms part of the divinely revealed and undivided heritage of the universal Church’ (Decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum, 1).
Today I am truly happy to receive the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops, together with the Cardinals, the Metropolitans and the Bishops members of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. I thank Cardinal Leonardo Sandri for the greeting he addressed to me and I am grateful for the collaboration I receive from the Dicastery and from each one of you.
Read the full address on Zenit here: