Pope's Wednesday General Audience of March 10

(March 10, 2010) Every week on Wednesday, the Pope holds a public meeting, called the general audience, during which pilgrims and tourists who come to Rome have a chance of seeing and hearing him speak. The Holy Father delivers a spiritual reflection and greets various groups in their languages, including in English. The General Audience of March 10 was held in the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall. It began with aides taking turns reading a scripture passage in various languages. One of the aides greeted the Pope on behalf of the English-speaking pilgrims, and presented the various groups to him. Pope Benedict then delivered a reflection in English. Listen:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In our catechesis on the Christian culture of the Middle Ages, we return to the teaching of Saint Bonaventure, the great Franciscan theologian of the thirteenth century. Bonaventure refuted the idea, based on the doctrine of Joachim of Fiore and associated with the “spiritual” Franciscans, that Saint Francis had inaugurated a new and final age of the Holy Spirit, to replace the age of Christ and the Church. In his defence of the newness of the Franciscan charism, he developed a remarkable theology of history and progress, based on the definitiveness of the Christ event and its enduring fruitfulness in the history of the Church. He insisted that Christian revelation will not be surpassed in history, and that the future fulfilment of God’s plan remains the object of our Christian hope. Bonaventure was influenced by the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, which present God as the origin and goal of a goodness which pervades the cosmos. In his work, The Journey of the Mind to God, he guides the soul from created realities to the mystic contemplation of the Triune God. Bonaventure made Christ the centre of his theology; his writings invite us to welcome Christ’s word into our hearts and thus to experience the joy of God’s eternal love.
I offer a warm welcome to the many school groups present, including the Bruderhof group from England and the students of Saint Michael’s Holy Cross Secondary School in Dublin, Ireland. The developments taking place in Northern Ireland in these days are a promising sign of hope, and I pray that they will help to consolidate the future of peace desired by all. Upon the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors I invoke God’s abundant blessings.

After speaking to other groups in their languages, Pope Benedict expressed his closeness with the victims of Monday’s earthquake in eastern Turkey and the victims of Muslim-Christian violence in Nigeria. Speaking in Italian the Pope expressed his profound closeness with the quake victims and their families, assuring them of his prayers and urging the international community to help out with prompt and generous relief.
The Pope also expressed his heartfelt condolences for the victims of the “atrocious violence” in Nigeria where he said, “even defenceless children were not spared.” At least 200 people, most of them Christians, were slaughtered on Sunday in several villages near Jos. Saying that ‘violence does not resolve conflicts but only increases the tragic consequences,” the Pope appealed to Nigeria’s civil and religious authorities to commit themselves to the security and peaceful coexistence of all the people. He expressed his closeness with Nigeria’s pastors and the faithful and prayed that with firm hope they may be authentic witnesses of reconciliation.