Before beginning Lenten retreat, pope
cites need for silence, prayer
Less than a week before he was to take top Vatican officials and
head out of town for a weeklong Lenten retreat, Pope
Francis said retreats should renew the faith of participants, transforming
their ministry and their relationships with others.
"Those
who live a retreat in an authentic way," the pope said, "experience
the attraction and fascination of God and return renewed and transfigured in
their daily lives, their ministry and their relationships."
The pope met March 3 with an Italian federation
of spiritual directors and those who run retreat houses throughout the country,
offering Christians "space and time to listen intensely to the word of God
in silence and in prayer."
The Vatican had announced in October that Pope Francis had decided
that he and his senior aides would not have their Lenten retreat in the
Vatican, but would go the Pauline Fathers' retreat and conference center in
Ariccia [site of the composition of the Pastoral
Constitution of the Church in the Modern World of Vatican II], a town about
20 miles southeast of Rome.
The pope has chosen Msgr. Angelo De Donatis, a popular spiritual
director and pastor of a parish in the center of Rome, to direct the March 9-14
retreat.
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