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s < §-° e E *3) jp 3® oS Co g &J oq o g°§ OS Q_ m ☆ The 1 ? Sou Diocese of Savannah mm ☆ hern Cross Vol. 81, No. 14 Thursday, April 5, 2001 $.50 PER ISSUE The restored crucifix in the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist is decorated for Lent with bare branches. Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday, April 8. Official Announcement B ishop J. Kevin Boland has announced the following pas toral appointment: —On presentation of Reverend Felix Elosi, MSP, Superior General of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul, U.S. Mission, Bishop Boland has appointed Reverend Brian Okon, MSP, Parochial Vicar of Saint Benedict the Moor Church, Savannah. This appointment was effective as of January 1, 2001. Pope urges frequent confession By John Norton Vatican City (CNS) ope John Paul II urged priests worldwide to help Christians re discover the sacrament of penance and to start by frequenting it them selves. The return of many Catholics— especially young people—to the prac tice of confession during the jubilee year was an “encouraging sign” upon which priests should build at the start of the new millennium, he said. The pope made his remarks in an annual letter to priests for Holy Thursday, commemorating Christ’s institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood at the Last Supper. The let ter was released at a Vatican press conference April 2. Writing in a personal style, the pope thanked priests for their efforts, some times at great personal cost, to bring the experience of Christ’s salvation to those in their care. “I want you to know of my admiration for this min istry, discreet, tenacious and creative, even if it is sometimes watered by those tears of the soul which only God sees and ‘stores in his bottle’,” he said. One essential aspect of intensely experiencing Christ, the pope said, is the sacrament of reconciliation, which has suffered a decline in recent de cades. The jubilee surge in confes sions “impels us to recognize that the profound needs of the human spirit... cannot be canceled out by temporary crises,” he said. The reasons for the crisis include a diminished sense of sin and an inade quate understanding of the sacraments in God’s plan. But priests also shared some blame, he said, because of “a certain dwindling of our own enthusi asm and availability for the exercise of this delicate and demanding min istry.” “Now more than ever the people of God must be helped to rediscover the sacrament. We need to declare with firmness and conviction that the sacrament of penance is the ordinary means of obtaining pardon and the remission of grave sins after baptism. “We ought to celebrate the sacra ment in the best possible way, accord ing to the forms laid down by liturgi cal law, so that it may lose none of its character as the celebration of God’s mercy,” he said. To restore confession’s place in Catholic practice, the pope said, priests must make an effort to redis cover for themselves “the full beauty Of this sacrament.” “The sacrament of reconciliation, essential for every Christian life, is especially a source of support, guid ance and healing for the priestly life,” he said. “Only those who have known the Father’s tender embrace,” he said, “can pass on to others the same warmth.” Priests must also combat a wide spread “minimalist” understanding of moral conscience and sin, which ignores the “radical demands of the Gospel,” the pope said. “Many of the faithful have an idea of sin that is not based on the Gospel but on common convention, on what is socially acceptable,” he said. “Evangelization in the third millen nium must come to grips with the urgent need for a presentation of the Gospel message which is dynamic, complete and demanding,” said the pope. He said priests should make clear that sin is not “purely private,” but is something that also “lowers the level of holiness” of the entire church com munity. Recovering the community sense of the sacrament was “extremely impor tant,” he said, and might be helped by communal penance services that end with individual confession and abso lution. Extension Society in diocese —see page 3 Communion and solidarity —see page 4 Southern Cross photo tips —see pages 6-7