{"id":6628,"date":"2006-08-02T08:16:44","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T08:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/back-in-town.html"},"modified":"2006-08-02T08:16:44","modified_gmt":"2006-08-02T08:16:44","slug":"back-in-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/back-in-town.html","title":{"rendered":"Back in town"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pope returned to Rome from Castel Gandolfo for the Wednesday audience today, to address a gathering of thousands of altar servers and choir members in St. Peter’s Square:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah started on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the pope has not let one public occasion pass by without repeating his appeal for an end to hostilities by Israel and Hezbollah. He has urged a quest for conditions of lasting peace, the safeguarding of the security of Israel and Lebanese sovereignty and guarantees for a homeland for the Palestinians. <\/p>\n

Today\u2019s event was a special audience by Benedict XVI for more than 35,000 ministrants (altar boys and choir singers) coming from all over the world. It is also his first audience in St Peter\u2019s Square after his summer break. <\/p>\n

The international meeting of ministrants was organized by the Coetus Internationalis Ministrantium<\/em>, a group set up in Altenberg (Cologne, Germany) in 1960 and dedicated to the spiritual formation of lay people committed to liturgical service. <\/p>\n

Speaking in German \u2013 30,000 of those present were from Germany \u2013 the pope reminded them that serving at the altar \u201cis a witness\u201d of \u201cnearness\u201d to Jesus. \u201cIf you remain united to Jesus and his words remain in you, then you will truly be his apostles and will take the fruit of good and of service into every area of your life: family, school and free time. Bear that love you receive in the Liturgy to all, especially where you see that love is lacking.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Quoting the words of John\u2019s Gospel (\u201cI do not call you servants but friends: remain in my love and you will bear much fruit.\u201d cfr Jn 15:9 -16), the pope also asked the young ministrants to be attentive to the voice of Jesus. <\/p>\n

\u201cListen to that voice! Listen to it with great availability,\u201d he added, \u201cif it calls you to give yourselves without any reservations to the life of the priesthood. Listen to it with faith whatever the road of your vocation may be, because Christ wants to establish ties of friendship with you too, as he did with Simon, who he called Peter, with Andrew, James, John and the other Apostles.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pope returned to Rome from Castel Gandolfo for the Wednesday audience today, to address a gathering of thousands of altar servers and choir members in St. Peter’s Square: Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah started on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the pope has not let one public occasion pass by without repeating his appeal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBack in town - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/back-in-town.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Back in town - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}