Vatican City, Jan 18, 2005 / 22:00 pm
At the end of his general audience today, the Holy Father gave a special greeting to the Armenian delegation present at the Vatican.
"I have special thoughts," he began, "for the patriarch of Cilicia of the Armenians, His Beatitude Nerses Bedros XIX, and the other bishops who accompany him."
The patriarch is in Rome for today's blessing by the Pope of a statue of St. Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle of Armenia who is also called "the Enlightener," who brought Christianity to the Armenians and who died in 332. The statue will be in a courtyard of St. Peter's Basilica.
"I also wish to greet," he added, "the priests, seminarians and lay people of the Neocatechumenal Way.”
“Dear ones”, the Pope addressed them, “I thank you for your generous commitment to the new evangelization. I hope that your reflections in recent days will help you to deepen, with a docile spirit, the communion both with the pastors of the local Churches and the appropriate offices of the Holy See.”
"You can thus offer an ever more effective contribution to the cause of the Gospel”, the Pope concluded.
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