Pope underscores the urgency of new evangelization

(September 19, 2011) Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday expressed admiration for all men and women agents of the new evangelization and urged for prayed for more religious and lay vocations for this urgent task of the Church. The Pope was speaking to the faithful in the courtyard of his summer residence of Castelgandolfo outside Rome, prior to reciting his weekly ‘Angelus’ prayer with them. Pope Benedict has given a new thrust to re-evangelization or new evangelization particularly in traditionally Christian countries where secularism and materialism has led to waning faith life and shunting God to the sidelines. The Holy Father recalled with wonder all the many "agents of this mission" already working in this field: “men and women who, like Saint Paul in Sunday’s reading, can say: ‘Life to me is Christ'. Individuals, families, communities, accept to work in the vineyard of the Lord, an image we find in today's Sunday Gospel,” the Pope said. He said they were humble, generous workers who ask no other recompense but to participate in the mission of Jesus and his Church. “Saint Paul - the Pope explained - was a man who combined in himself the Jewish, the Greek and the Roman worlds. It is not by chance that God entrusted to him the mission to carry the Gospel from Asia-Minor to Greece and then on to Rome, thus establishing a bridge which was to project Christianity to the far corners of the earth ”. The Pontiff said that “the Gospel changed the world and continues to transform it, like a river irrigating an immense field,” and urged all to