Vatican City, Mar 9, 2009 / 11:45 am
At the conclusion of the Roman Curia’s spiritual exercises on Saturday, Pope Benedict expressed his thanks to Cardinal Francis Arinze for guiding them through the week of meditations and helping “us to renew our priesthood.”
Addressing Cardinal Arinze, who is the prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Holy Father gratefully said, “You offered us no theological acrobatics, but sound doctrine, the good bread of our faith.”
The Pontiff also noted that the cardinal’s preaching revealed “a great familiarity with the Word of God, seen in the context of the living Church from the Fathers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church - and always contextualized in the readings and in the liturgy. Precisely for this reason, Scripture was present in its full contemporary significance."
The Holy Father stated that he has "admired and enjoyed this tangible experience" of Cardinal Arinze's fifty years of priesthood, "in the light of which you helped us to strengthen our faith. You used the right words, words with real significance for our lives and for our behavior as priests," he said.
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