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Tuesday, 27 April 2010 11:23 |
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The words, ti siamo vicine appeared on one large sign raised aloft among the estimated 100,000 cheering pilgrims on Easter Sunday in St. Peter’s Square this year. Santitá, ti siamo vicine is Italian for "Your Holiness, we are close to you." The greeting was of course for Pope Benedict XVI, who recently completed his fifth year in Peter’s Chair.
"Holy Father, we are close to you" is a phrase being sounded throughout the world by fair-minded Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Benedict XVI is an extraordinary leader, whom history will continue to accolade not only for his masterful encyclicals, but for his devotion to the sacred liturgy and, integral to it, his magnificent homilies, so solid and powerful, yet so subtle and disarming. We count it a special privilege to congratulate Benedict, and thank the Lord that we have been gifted by God to be alive during this remarkable continuum of towering Roman Pontiffs, in a sequence that just gave us one of the most memorable of all; namely, Pope John Paul II.
Like John Paul, our present Holy Father has been asked by the Lord to shoulder a unique cross. Knowing that with grace Benedict will be equal to the call, we repeat: Santitá, ti siamo vicini(e). Ad multos annos!
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