Materialism and a sense of self-sufficiency are obstacles to a Christian life of charity, the Pope said.

Instead of looking first to God and then to the well-being of others, people often have an attitude of “indifference and disinterest born of selfishness and masked as a respect for ‘privacy’.”

He said that God’s commandment to love “demands that we acknowledge our responsibility toward those who, like ourselves, are creatures and children of God”.

The annual Lenten message was presented during a Vatican news conference by Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the office which handles the Pope’s charitable giving, along with Mgr Segundo Tejado Munoz, the council’s undersecretary.

The cardinal highlighted the Pope’s call for “fraternal correction” and the Church’s prophetic mission in denouncing situations of injustice and poverty in the world.

To overcome such injustices, one must get to the moral roots of such situations, he said. Corruption, accumulation of wealth, violence, and living off the work of others without contributing are all cancers that weaken a society from within, the cardinal said.

But, he said, the true root of the world’s injustices stems from ignoring or denying God’s existence. By not acknowledging there is a creator and Lord who is greater than man, society degenerates into a “conflictual individualism” and a struggle of one person against another, Cardinal Sarah said.

The theme of the 2012 Lenten message was taken from St Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews: “Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works.”

The Pope outlined his message with three points taken from St Paul’s letter: “concern for others, reciprocity and personal holiness.”

Concern for others, the Pope said, means wanting what is good physically, morally and spiritually for one’s neighbour. But he noted that contemporary culture “seems to have lost the sense of good and evil”.

“There is a real need to reaffirm that good does exist and will prevail,” the Pope said, defining good as “whatever gives, protects and promotes life, brotherhood and communion”.

The Pope warned against what he called “spiritual anaesthesia”, which numbs people to the suffering of others. Only a “humbleness of heart and the personal experience of suffering can awaken within us a sense of compassion and empathy,” he said.

The suffering of others is not only physical or material, he said, but it is also spiritual, and he encouraged Christians to remember their “spiritual responsibility” toward their neighbour. He called for a renewal of a forgotten aspect of the Christian life, that is, “fraternal correction.”

Fraternal correction, he said, is a kind of Christian charity that speaks out against people indulging in sin.

“We must not remain silent before evil,” he said.

Often, “out of human regard or purely personal convenience”, Christians fail to warn others against ways of thinking and behaving that are contrary to the truth.

The reluctance to confront others in the name of truth, he said, stems from a world view dominated by individualism, which “accepts any moral choice in the name of personal freedom”, which then makes people blind to physical suffering and the spiritual and moral demands of life.

However, God wants Christians to help and encourage each other to strive for the truth, for good and holy lives, he said.

Fraternal correction must never be motivated by a spirit of accusation or recrimination, but instead be both loving and admonishing, as God is with his children, he added.

“Both our sins and our acts of love have a social dimension,” which is why the Church asks forgiveness for the sins of its members and at the same time rejoices in examples of virtue and charity in the Church, he said.

The Pope said time was precious and people must not become lukewarm about performing good works and using their God-given spiritual and material riches for the benefit of others.

In a world “which demands of Christians a renewed witness of love and fidelity to the Lord, may all of us feel the urgent need to anticipate one another in charity, service and good works,” he said.

JAIPUR: Richard Dawkins – scientist, bestselling author and the world’s foremost atheist – comes across as mild-mannered and genial but doesn’t believe in pulling his punches. He certainly didn’t on Monday at the Jaipur Lit Fest as he blasted the “lamentable disgrace” of Salman Rushdie’s enforced absence. He also launched a broadside against the “virus of faith”, and said he looked forward to the “complete death of organised religion” in his lifetime.

Dawkins singled out various irrational beliefs, including “Santa Claus, baby Jesus and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer” and then homed in on the Catholic Church:

Dawkins pointed out that in the 16th century, some Catholics in England had written to a senior figure in the Vatican asking if it was acceptable to murder Elizabeth I. The answer was that since the Queen had led millions away from Catholicism, her murder would be a commendable act. Dawkins didn’t spell it out, but two points were clear- he wasn’t targeting a faith but all of them, and nothing much has changed in almost 500 years. “Religion is deadly because it makes people willing to die and kill for it without a shred of evidence to back up their beliefs,” he said.

Well, that needn’t detain us for very long. We all know that Pius V’s bull, Regnans in Excelsis (1570), which declared Elizabeth I a heretic and released her subjects from their allegiance to her, was a massive political blunder, since Elizabeth, who had thus far tolerated Catholic worship in private, now started actively persecuting Catholics, a persecution whose effects lasted for over 400 years and are with us still (Dawkins himself is in a sense riding on the back of it, as we saw in his campaign against the Pope’s visit to England). Dawkins claims to rule his life by the light of reason: but to say that Pius V’s disastrous blunder disproves his religion is entirely irrational. Regnans in Excelsis isn’t in any sense a religious or spiritual document: it’s power politics from beginning to end. As for religion being deadly “because it makes people willing to die and kill for it without a shred of evidence to back up their beliefs”, how about the willingness of the atheists Stalin and Mao massively to kill for it in the name of their own supposedly scientific but equally unproved anti-religious beliefs?

But this is the kind of thing we are used to from Dawkins. What attracts attention here is that prediction: that there will be the “complete death of organised religion” in his lifetime. Well now. He’s almost certainly wrong, and I wouldn’t bother to dignify his polemical sally with any argument against it, if it didn’t seem on the face of it to be not entirely dissimilar to a recent predictive speculation of the Holy Father’s, uttered three days later at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent plenary session. “We are facing,” the Pope said, “a deep crisis of faith, a loss of religious sense which poses the greatest challenge for the Church today”: he went on to warn that “In vast areas of the world faith risks going out like a flame that no longer has anything to burn on.”

It’s happened before, of course, this selective death of faith where once it flourished: where is St Augustine’s Hippo now? In North Africa, once a centre of the Catholic faith, that’s where. But to realise that the survival of the faith in any particular place or area of the globe is never secure is quite different from doubting the dominical promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”. Whatever may be happening in Europe and North America, worldwide the faith is still advancing, not retreating.

And of course, that’s what the Pope is really saying: it’s the renewal of faith that he’s after, especially in areas of the world where it seems threatened. Fr Z’s translation of the relevant passage (which I didn’t find complete and in English anywhere else) is useful here:

As we know, in vast areas of the world the Faith is in danger of being snuffed out like a flame that no longer has any sustenance. We are at a profound crisis of faith, at a loss of a religious sense that constitutes the greatest challenge for the Church of today. The renewal of the faith must therefore be the priority in the undertaking of the whole Church in our times. I hope that the Year of Faith can contribute, with the cordial collaboration of all the members of the People of God, to bring God back anew to this world and to open to men an access to the faith, to a reliance on the God who loved us to the end (cf John 13,1), in Christ Jesus, crucified and risen.

Fr Z’s own contribution to that process is to say that “nothing of which His Holiness spoke is going to be accomplished without a renewal of our liturgical worship”; and I’m quite certain that he’s right. That’s where it has to begin: at the altar. I’m less sure than he is that this can be accomplished principally by homing in on Summorum Pontificum, though I absolutely agree that it remains “one of the most important acts of his pontificate”. This is what Fr Z would like to see:

We need more and more and more opportunities for people to experience the older, traditional form of the Roman Rite in our Latin Church parishes.

Younger priests: learn the older form. This is your Rite! Know your Rite! If you are a Latin Church priest, who are you if you don’t know your Rite? Just do it!

Lay people: band together and start requesting celebrations of Holy Mass also in the Extraordinary Form. Get organized. Form a schola and start singing chant so you will be ready when the time comes. Offer to take care of all the material details. Offer to provide vestments, books, money so the priest can go get training. Start thinking about forming a group of servers, perhaps even father and son teams.

I agree with all of that, and on Sundays I not infrequently hear Mass in the Extraordinary Form. But I still find myself more often attending High Mass in Latin according to the Novus Ordo. I am, I admit, exceptionally fortunate in my parish church, the Oxford Oratory, where I can experience every week what the Church’s liturgy could be everywhere. There’s no question for us of “the Faith [being] in danger of being snuffed out like a flame that no longer has any sustenance”. Fr Z concludes by saying that “Many benefits will flow from a side by side experience of both forms of Holy Mass of the Latin Church”, and I’m certain he’s right: I’m quite sure, for instance, that my clergy’s celebration of the Novus Ordo is deeply enriched by the fact that they all regularly celebrate the Old Mass too.

But I am also only too aware that when I am away from home Sundays can be very different, and that though the Mass is always irreducibly the Mass, the way it is celebrated can send a real chill to the heart. For every priest, everywhere, seriously to address this problem has to be seen as a first priority. Do the bishops understand how important this is? I wonder.

The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales is distributing one million cards to 24 dioceses including the Bishopric of the Forces and the ordinariate in order to cultivate evangelisation among Catholics.

The credit-card-size resource features on one side a clear statement that the carrier is a Catholic and a list of six things that Catholics are called to do.

There is also a sentence that reads: “In the event of an emergency, please contact a Catholic priest.”

The other side of the card has a quote from Blessed John Henry Newman, focusing on the call to serve and affirming that everyone has a mission.

Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton, chairman of the bishops’ Department for Evangelisation and Catechesis, said: “We all carry a variety of cards in our purses and wallets which reflect something of our identity and the things that are important to us. The faith card for Catholics aims to offer a daily reminder of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. We can’t summarise the whole of our faith in bullet points, but we hope that the card simply inspires people to do, read and learn more.”

The bishop added: “The card is also designed to give Catholics confidence to share their faith – often people need help knowing what to say. Faith is a not a private matter. This is something that Pope Benedict reminded the Catholic community in his recent letter announcing a Year of Faith, beginning in October 2012. Carrying a faith card takes courage, it signals to others, every time you use your wallet or purse, that you believe in God, that your life has a purpose, that you are trying to love and serve your neighbour. We hope that Catholics will use it to witness to their faith. If someone asks a question about Catholicism, a starting point could be to show the card and to take it from there.”

The resource is free and will be distributed to diocesan offices during February and March 2012 for local circulation.

Fr Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican Press Office, criticised as “partisan” “partial and banal” an Italian television news programme, which broadcast portions of letters addressed to Pope Benedict and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State.

The letters were apparently signed by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano and written when he was the secretary general of the commission governing Vatican City.

One of the letters, dated April 4, 2011, said that when Archbishop Vigano took office almost two years earlier, he discovered a “disastrous situation” of “chaotic management” and overspending on contracts.

The letter also complained of a “media campaign” launched by opponents of the archbishop’s efforts at reform, and implored the Pope not to remove him from his job, “even for promotion to a more important post”.

The Pope named Archbishop Vigano as nuncio to the US in October 2011.

The commission manages the 108 acres of Vatican City State, including the Vatican Gardens and Museums.

During Archbishop Vigano’s stint as the commission’s second-highest official, a budget deficit of nearly $9.8 million in 2009 turned into a surplus of $28 million in 2010.

According to Gianluigi Nuzzi, an Italian journalist who hosted the broadcast, the archbishop’s reforms included cutting the cost of the Christmas nativity scene in St Peter’s Square by more than 250,000 euros and lowering expenses for maintaining the Vatican Gardens by some 800,000 euros.

In a written statement, Fr Lombardi praised Archbishop Vigano’s tenure at the commission as one of “administrative rigour, savings, and rectification of a generally difficult economic situation”. However, he noted that other factors, including a rise in attendance at the Vatican Museums, help to explain the improved finances during the period in question.

The principles of “correct and healthy administration and of transparency” that inspired the archbishop continue today to guide the management of the commission, Fr Lombardi said.

The letter to Cardinal Bertone, dated March 27, 2011, eight days before the letter to Pope Benedict, complained of the cardinal’s plans to remove Archbishop Vigano from his post, accusing him of breaking a promise to let the archbishop succeed the then president of the commission, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, upon the latter’s retirement.

According to the letter, Cardinal Bertone had mentioned unspecified “tensions” within the commission to explain Archbishop Vigano’s reassignment, but the letter’s author suggested that an Italian newspaper article criticising the archbishop as incompetent had contributed to the decision.

During the broadcast featuring the letters, Mr Nuzzi was joined by Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, who voiced scepticism at the suggestion that a post as prestigious as that of nuncio to the US could be considered a demotion.

Mr Vian also noted that, according to usual practice, number two officials of Vatican offices are rarely promoted to the top job.

The apostolic nunciature in Washington declined to comment.

Fr Lombardi would neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of the letters, which were shown on screen during the broadcast; but his statement deplored the “publication of private documents”.

He also suggested that the Vatican might pursue legal action to protect the reputations of Vatican officials named in the broadcast, including investment advisers whose recommendations purportedly led the Vatican to lose 2.5 million euros in a single transaction.

Be Saints! An Invitation from Pope Benedict XVI is written by author and blogger Amy Welborn and illustrated by the award-winning New York-based watercolourist Ann Kissane Engelhart, whose paintings have been featured in the Empire State Building and St Francis Hospital among other landmarks.

The book features scenes from the “Big Assembly”, where children from around England and Wales saw the Holy Father at St Mary’s College in Twickenham.

Also among the illustrations are Blessed John Henry Newman conducting a choir and a young man praying to St Thomas More and St John Fisher.

The project began in 2009 after Mrs Englehart, who had been reading Welborn’s blog Charlotte Was Both, and suggested working on a project about Benedict’s message.

The book gives advice on friendship with God, finding happiness and “giving yourself totally to Jesus”, as well as quotes by Pope Benedict such as: “What really matters in life is that we are loved by Christ, and that we love him in return. In comparison to the love of Jesus, everything else is secondary.”

Be Saints! An Invitation from Pope Benedict XVI is published by the Catholic Truth Society and is on sale for £9.95.

Analysis suggests that a reading age of 16 is required to understand the Holy Father, compared to an age of just 13 for Harvard-educated Obama.

The University of Minnesota’s Smart Politics site found that Obama’s state of the union address registered at an eighth grade (13-year-old) reading level, despite the president’s reputation as a brilliant orator.

The score, calculated using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, is the third lowest of any state of the union address since 1934.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a Catholic institute, analysed Benedict XVI’s addresses since September and found that they scored 11.6 (11th grade) using the same test.

And Blessed Pope John Paul II, based on the homilies he gave in America in 1979, had a slightly lower average score of 10.7.

Neither popes, however, could challenge George Washington’s score of 25, the highest ever recorded for a US presidential address.

The Flesch-Kincaid test uses word and sentence length to calculate how easy a text is to read.

Mary Kenny commented in the Telegraph that “Our Irish parents and grandparents would find astonishing the acidly anti-clerical views expressed in the Republic of Ireland today. The land that once called itself a foremost Catholic nation and most loyal ally of the Holy Father is awash with sentiments that seem to veer between Ulster Paisleyism and the Spanish republicanism of the 1930s”.

The Irish foreign minister a few months later announced that the Government had decided to close the Irish embassy to the Holy See, saying that it cost too much and that given Ireland’s current financial situation, with great regret, and bla de bla de bla. Whatever the excuse, the closure was pretty clearly part of a continuing anti-Vatican (and anti-Catholic) campaign by the Irish government.

But how far was all that part of a real and fundamental rejection by the Irish people of the Catholic religion itself? George Weigel, from across the Atlantic, pronounced confidently that “Ireland has now become the epicentre of European anti-Catholicism”. But this was always a ludicrous conclusion to reach. Of course, there had been a huge disenchantment with the Irish bishops, and widespread calls for radical reform in the way the Irish Church was actually run. But to suggest that the Irish had lost their faith, that there had been a massive cultural shift leading to the kind of secularisation that we have seen on this side of the Irish sea, even to the birth of an anti-Catholicism on the scale suggested by George Weigel, was always utterly absurd.

As I wrote at the time,

The real point about the Irish people is that they have not become disenchanted with the Catholic religion at all; it’s precisely by the moral standards of the Catholic religion that they are now judging all too many bishops and some, a small minority but still far too many, clergy. The child abuse scandals themselves have brought no decline in Mass attendance. On the contrary, far from being the “epicentre” of European anti-Catholicism, the practice of the Catholic religion is one of the highest in Europe.

As Michael Kelly pointed out in the Irish Catholic in April: “Decline in Church attendance in Ireland happened long before revelations about abuse and the subsequent cover-up. Polls show that in 1981 a staggering 88 per cent of Irish people attended Mass at least once a month, with 82 per cent attending weekly. By 2006 that figure had slipped to just 48 per cent for weekly Mass attendance while that figure climbs to 67 per cent when those who attend at least once a month are factored in.

Subsequent polls have been fairly consistent, putting weekly Mass attendance somewhere between 45 per cent and 48 per cent. These are remarkably high figures by western European standards (the latest figures for Italy are 22 per cent and approximately 10 per cent for France). The fact is that the rebellion of the chattering and political classes against the power of the bishops (in itself not necessarily a bad thing) was never remotely a rejection by a largely Catholic people of their faith. And that, it seems, is now being borne out by recent events. According to a piece in the Catholic World Report,

the Irish Government is now coming under increased grassroots pressure to reverse its always controversial decision to close the country’s Embassy to the Holy See:

Dozens of parliamentarians – including many from the Fine Gael and Labour coalition parties – attended a meeting in Dublin January 18 called to highlight opposition to the closure and some 96,000 postcards have been sent to Prime Minister Enda Kenny by members of several different lay initiatives and individual Catholics protesting the move.

‘Ireland Stand Up’ is campaigning for the closure of the embassy to be reversed and for the Government to issue an invitation for Pope Benedict XVI to visit the country.

Note the name of that movement: “Ireland stand up”: this is a movement of the people against politicians who have now gone just too far (incidentally, almost a third of TDs (Irish MPs) – backbenchers, with their regular contact with their constituencies, are often better informed than ministers about grassroots opinion – attended that meeting calling for the Irish embassy to the Vatican to be reopened). The CWR reports that the energy around the campaign to restore the embassy to the Holy See has surprised many. “Ordinary Catholics seem to have found a voice around this issue,” they quote David Quinn of the think tank the Iona Institute as saying.

It’s one thing for Irish politicians to get out from under the historically excessive political power of the bishops: that can never now be re-established, and probably a good thing, too. But the political attacks on the Vatican itself were a big mistake. When you have lost faith in your bishops, it’s the Pope you look to. “Ireland Stand Up” wants the Pope to celebrate Mass at the closing ceremonies of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress next June in Croke Park, Dublin. I have a feeling that that will happen. Pope Benedict will come and celebrate Mass before a vast congregation: and he will once more, by the great power of his visible holiness and humility, weave his magic. Just as his visit here led to many salutary changes in the English Church, so the regeneration of the Irish Church, and the beginning of the restoration of its morale, will be set in motion then.

Far from being the enemy of calm and quiet, social media and the internet can lead people to sanctuaries that offer silent reflection, thoughtful dialogue and true meaning in life, he said.

“Attention should be paid to the various types of websites, applications and social networks which can help people today to find time for reflection and authentic questioning, as well as making space for silence and occasions for prayer, meditation or sharing of the word of God,” he said in his message for the 2012 celebration of World Communications Day.

Even brief posts and viral tweets can carry potent messages when people use those tools – not for spamming or for scanning the latest gossip – but for sharing a real part of themselves, he said.

“In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated, as long as those taking part in the conversation do not neglect to cultivate their own inner lives,” he said.

The theme of this year’s World Communications Day – marked in most dioceses the Sunday before Pentecost, this year on May 20 – is “Silence and Word: Path of Evangelisation”. The papal message was released on the feast of St Francis de Sales, patron of writers, on Tuesday.

At a press conference on the message’s release, Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said there was a huge difference between a “semantic silence” that can be rich in or bolster meaning versus “keeping quiet” and ignoring the reality.

“There are situations where I must speak up,” he said, because otherwise “my silence would be a betrayal”, especially when witnessing injustice.

The kind of silence that needs cultivating is not the kind that alienates people, but that leads people to a greater awareness and sensitivity of others and their needs, he said.

When asked how the pressures of the 24-hour news cycle on television and talk shows could feasibly implement the benefits of silence, the Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, who also heads Vatican Radio and the Vatican television center, said silence is used when one truly listens to the other.

A talk show or debate in which each participant could speak and be heard without others trying to interrupt “would already be a step forward”, the priest said.

In his message, the Pope said that “silence is often overlooked” but is especially important today.

Silence, words, images and sounds need “a kind of eco-system,” that is, to find a harmonious, symbiotic balance “if authentic dialogue and deep closeness between people are to be achieved”, he said.

Words without reflection and silence without meaning result in confusion, coldness and communication breakdown, he said.

Silence builds meaning, clarity and creativity since “we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth;” and people have the time to choose how to best express themselves, he said.

Listening to others requires silence, and “we avoid being tied simply to our own words and ideas without them being adequately tested”, he said.

Moments of quiet and calm allow people to sift through, process and evaluate the information they’re bombarded with, figure out what is important or secondary, discover connections and “share thoughtful and relevant opinions, giving rise to an authentic body of shared knowledge”, the Pope said.

The Pope underlined the importance of digital media – a theme he has championed in his three previous communications day messages.

Search engines and social networks aid people in their innate thirst for answers and the truth, he said.

Because many people launch queries online about the deepest meanings of life, it is important for the Church “to affirm those who ask these questions and open up the possibility of a profound dialogue, by means of words and interchange, but also through the call to silent reflection,” he said.

He said silence was also key to the new evangelisation – the central theme for the world Synod of Bishops that will meet in October.

“If God speaks to us even in silence, we, in turn, discover in silence the possibility of speaking with God and about God,” he said.

Language, in fact, fails to encompass and truly communicate God’s grandeur; the extent of his love, power and mercy sink in with silent contemplation, and from that awe-inspiring awareness springs forth “the urgent sense of mission, the compelling obligation” to share Christ and his word with others, he said.

At an audience on the same day Pope Benedict XVI said that the aim of the unique rite must be to encourage members to partake fully in the liturgical life of the parish.

The Pope encouraged the movement’s members to continue “to offer your original contribution to the cause of the Gospel”, and he urged them to always make sure their “precious work” was in “profound communion with the Apostolic See and the pastors of the local Church in which they’re inserted”.

“Unity and harmony of the ecclesial body are an important witness to Christ and his Gospel in the world we live in,” he said during an audience with 7,000 members of the Neocatechumenal Way, a parish-based faith formation programme.

A number of top Curial officials and the Neocatechumenal Way’s Spanish founders, Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez, were also in the Vatican’s Paul VI hall.

The Pontifical Council for the Laity approved a decree that said, with the approval of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, the council “grants the approval of those celebrations contained in the Catechetical Directory of the Neocatechumenal Way, which, are not, by their nature, already regulated by the liturgical books of the Church”.

The decree, dated January 8 and released by the Vatican on Friday, was signed by the laity council’s president, Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, and its secretary, Bishop Josef Clemens.

The decree also mentioned the Vatican’s approval of the organisation’s statutes in 2008 and its catechetical directory in 2010.

In his audience talk, the Pope said that while the celebrations described in the directory had been approved, the celebrations “are not strictly liturgical, but are part of an itinerary of growth in the faith”.

“The celebrations in the small communities, regulated by the liturgical books – which are to be followed faithfully, and with the particularities approved of in the Statutes of the Way – are tasked with helping those who follow the neocatechumenal itinerary be aware of the grace of being part of the salvific mystery of Christ,” he said.

The celebrations are a kind of stepping stone to the parish Mass as a way to help form and reintroduce lapsed or ill-prepared Catholics into “the richness of sacramental life”, the Pope said. For that reason “the neocatechumenates can celebrate the Sunday Eucharist in their small communities after the first Sunday vespers according to the arrangements of the diocesan bishop”, he said.

But the Pope emphasised that every Eucharistic celebration “is ultimately directed by the bishop” and must be open to all Catholics, not just members of the Neocatechumenal Way.

“The progressive maturation in the faith” of each member and small community “must favour their insertion in the life of the greater ecclesial community, which is found in the liturgical celebration of the parish”, he said.

But during the neocatechumenate’s journey of formation “it’s important not to be separated from the parish community, precisely in the Eucharistic celebration, which is the true place of unity for everyone, where the Lord embraces us in our different stages of spiritual maturity and unites us in the one bread that makes us one body.”

The Pope said the latest oversight measure reflected the way in which the Church “accompanies you with attention in a patient discernment, understands your richness, but looks, too, toward the communion and harmony of the whole ecclesial body”.

The papal audience was an annual event in which the Pope blesses families who, responding to the request of a local bishop, agree to go off as missionaries to assist with evangelisation efforts.

Of the 18 groups being sent as missionaries and accompanied by a priest, three families were heading to Boston. The majority were heading to European cities.