Pontiff entrusts pastors of the world to St. Joseph

(December 20, 2010) Pope Benedict has entrusted all the pastors of the Church to the protection of St. Joseph, so that they are able to offer to the world the message of Christ. The Pope was reflecting on the birth of Christ from the "perspective of St. Joseph" before praying the weekly midday “Angelus” with those gathered in St. Peter's Square on Sunday. The Holy Father recounted that Sunday’s Gospel presented St. Joseph as a "just man," as well as a man "faithful to God’s law, ready to do his will." "On account of this," he added, Joseph "enters into the mystery of the Incarnation after an angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream urging him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, as the child in her was from the Holy Spirit. Pope Benedict said that "in Joseph there was amiability and the figure of a just man to make the quality of his witness more worthy." He noted that Joseph "did as the angel of the Lord ordered him," and that he was "certain of doing the right thing." The Holy Father said that the Church venerates the legal father of Jesus, because the new man takes form in him, who looks to the future with confidence and courage, does not follow his own project, but entrusts himself totally to the infinite mercy of him who fulfils the prophecies and inaugurates the season of salvation. The Pope thus entrusted the pastors of the Church to St. Joseph, "exhorting them to offer to faithful Christians and the whole world the humble and daily proposal of the words of Christ."