Pope in Loreto: Grace creates freedom

(Vatican Radio) One week ahead of the opening of the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Benedict XVI travelled to the Marian Shrine of Loreto, in Italy, to entrust the Assembly and the upcoming Year of Faith to the Blessed Virgin Mary. More than ten thousand people packed the Piazza in front of the Shrine of the Holy House of Loreto to greet Pope Benedict XVI as he made his second visit to the famous Basilica.

The Holy Father was following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Blessed John XXIII who, exactly fifty years earlier had visited Loreto to entrust to our Blessed Mother the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council. In his homily, Pope Benedict said that he, too, had come on pilgrimage “to entrust to the Mother of God two important ecclesial initiatives: the Year of Faith, which will begin in a week, on October 11, on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which I have convened this October with the theme ‘The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith’.”

The Pope said, “It is precisely here at Loreto that we have the opportunity to attend the school of Mary who was called ‘blessed’ because she ‘believed’.” This Shrine, he continued, “build around her earthly home, preserves the memory of the moment when the angel of the Lord came to Mary with the great announcement of the Incarnation, and she gave her positive reply.”

In the Annunciation, Pope Benedict noted, God waits for Mary’s ‘yes’. God “has created a free partner in dialogue, from whom he requests a reply in complete liberty.” Mary’s ‘yes’ is the fruit of divine grace; but, the Pope says, “grace does not eliminate freedom; on the contrary, it creates and sustains it.”

The Holy Father concluded his homily by entrusting to “the Most Holy Mother of God all the difficulties affecting our world as it seeks serenity and peace, the problems of the many families who look anxiously to the future, the aspirations of young people at the start of their lives, the suffering of those awaiting signs or decisions of solidarity and love. I also wish to place in the hands of the Mother of God this special time of grace for the Church, now opening up before us.”

Listen to Christopher Wells’ report: