Vatican City, Aug 18, 2004 / 22:00 pm
The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, called the recent trip by Pope John Paul II to the Marian shrine of Lourdes an eloquent “hymn in honor of life.”
According the front-page story published Tuesday and signed by Editor-in-Chief Mario Agnes, the Pope lifted up “a hymn in honor of joy, life, freedom and solidarity” with his trip to Lourdes.
Agnes said the Pope “did not go to greet the Virgin in an automobile but rather in a chair, which the instrument he uses to get around in his daily life.”
“Thus he passed by so many people who are suffering, drawing close to them, in that chair which is like an itinerant Cathedral, the itinerant Cathedral of the Pilgrim pastor,” he added.