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The ^ J
Sou hern
Diocese of M __
Savannah | ^fOSS
Vol. 79, No. 4
Thursday, January 28,1999
$.50 PER ISSUE
News *. 2-3
Commentary 4-5
Around the Diocese ... 6-7
Faith Alive! 8-9
Notices 10-11
Last But Not Least .... 12
Martin Luther King, Jr.
REMEMBERED, SEE PAGE 6
First Southern Cross editor dies,
SEE PAGE 10
Pope preaches conversion,
justice as ways to spread Gospel
By John Thavis
Mexico City (CNS)
O n a visit to Mexico to outline the
new path of evangelization in the
Americas, Pope John Paul II said the
church must spread Christ’s message by
awakening individuals to conversion
and by leading societies to justice.
In Mexico City, where he presented
the results of the Synod of Bishops for
America, the pope appealed for protec
tion of human life in all its forms. A
hallmark of the “new evangelization”
should be the defense of life against a
wide range of modem evils, from abor
tion to the death penalty, he said.
“The time has come to banish once
and for all from the continent every
attack against life. No more violence,
terrorism and drug-trafficking! No more
torture or other forms of abuse!” he
said at a Mass January 23 at the Basili
ca of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“There must be an end to the unnec
essary recourse to the death penalty! No
more exploitation of the weak, racial
discrimination or ghettoes of poverty!
Never again! These are intolerable evils
which cry out to heaven,” he said.
On January 24, celebrating a liturgy
before what organizers said was more
than a million people at a Mexico City
racetrack, the pope again condemned
abortion, saying no Mexican should
“dare to harm the precious and sacred
gift of life in the womb.”
Mexican authorities said more than
100 of the thousands of people who
spent the night at the racetrack were
treated for cold-related injuries.
The pope was on the first leg of a trip
that would also take him to St. Louis
January 26-27 for a Mass, a youth rally
and a meeting with President Bill Clin
ton. In the Mexican capital, home to the
largest concentration of Catholics in the
world, residents turned out by the hun
dreds of thousands to welcome the pon
tiff with candles, confetti and chants of
“El papa! El Papa! Rah, rah, rah!” One
homemade sign addressed the pope
with his boyhood nickname “Lolek”
(“Chuck”). In a more commercial style,
hundreds of banners featured the Pepsi
logo and the message: “Mexico ever
faithful.”
The 78-year-old pope moved slowly
and tentatively throughout many of the
ceremonies, but he appeared focused
and passionate when pronouncing his
English-language plea for dignity at the
January 23 Mass.
“This is our cry: life with dignity for
all! For all who have been conceived in
their mother’s womb, for street chil
dren, for indigenous peoples and Afro-
Americans, for immigrants and
refugees, for the young deprived of
opportunity, for the old, for those who
suffer any kind of poverty or marginal -
ization,” he said.
His sermon was repeatedly applauded
by 12,000 people who packed the basili
ca, an arching modem structure of cop
per and marble that holds a venerated
image of Mary. In his synod document,
the pope proclaimed December 12 as the
Americas-wide feast day of Our Lady of
Guadalupe, patroness of all America.
Concelebrating with the pope were
about 500 gold-mitered bishops and
cardinals, including many from the
United States. Offertory gifts included a
commemorative book of the Gospels
and readings from the United States,
and a traditional quilt and bed cover
from Canadian Catholics.
The liturgy marked the presentation
of the pope’s 139-page apostolic exhor
tation, “The Church in America,” which
summarized and finalized conclusions
of the synod, held in late 1997 in
Rome. The document said the church
should keep reaching out to the poor
with spiritual and material programs,
but must also evangelize society’s rich
and powerful.
It reminded Catholics that the heart of
the church’s mission is proclamation of
Christ, and that the church’s social activ
ities flow from personal conversion.
“For this service of the poor to be
both evangelical and evangelizing, it
must faithfully reflect the attitude of
Jesus, who came to proclaim the Good
News to the poor,” it said.
The document denounced an emerg
ing “culture of death,” a social model in
which the powerful are “setting aside
and even eliminating the powerless.”
It sharply criticized forms of econom
ic “neoliberalism,” in which the profit
motive and market mechanisms are
(Continued on page 2)
Pope John Paul II signs the apostolic exhortation for the Synod of
Bishops for America during a ceremony in Mexico CHy January 22.
Document urges new
evangelization of Americas
Mexico City (CNS)
n a final document on the Synod
of Bishops for America, Pope
John Paul II urged a fresh program
of evangelization in the Western
Hemisphere, built on the twin pil
lars of conversion to Christ and sol
idarity with the suffering. The
church must keep reaching out to
the poor with spiritual and material
programs, the pope said. But it
must also evangelize the rich and
powerful — a group that has some
times been pastorally neglected, he
said. The pope’s guidelines, in the
form of an “apostolic exhortation”
addressed to all Catholics in North
and South America, endorsed virtu
ally all the proposals made at the
close of the synod, held at the Vati
can in late 1997. The pontiff signed
the letter shortly after his arrival in
Mexico City January 22 and cele
brated its publication with a Mass
in the Basilica of Our Lady of
Guadalupe the next day. The pope
entrusted the future of evangeliza
tion to Mary and declared Decem
ber 12 as an Americas-wide feast
day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Titled, “The Church in America,”
the 139-page document covered a
wide range of pastoral and social
issues, from the value of prayer to
the relationship between the church
and politics.
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