NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      VATICAN CITY, 4 (NE) "The experience of the Father of Jesus in Nazareth" was the theme of the Holy Father's catechesis held yesterday in Saint Peter's Square where thousands of pilgrims had gathered to meet the Pope. "In his trinitarian mystery, God is Father through essence, the eternal Father, in that He generates the Word Who is consubstantial with Him, and united to Him in the Holy Spirit," the Holy Father affirmed.

      "The relationship between Jesus and the Father is unique," the Pope recalled, stating that "Jesus can present Himself as He who reveals the Father, with knowledge which is the fruit of an intimate and mysterious reciprocity." The Pontiff highlighted as well that Jesus uses the word "Abba" to address God, which shows the extraordinary closeness between Jesus and God the Father, an unprecedented intimacy in the religious biblical context or outside the biblical context."

      On the same day, recalling the 20th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's first encyclical Redemptor hominis, published March 4th of 1979, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna, highlighted the document's "great prevalence for the present times."

      "In this first solemn document the Pope introduces Christianity and the whole world in the perspective of the year 2000," the Cardinal said. In it "the Pope also underlined that this proximity to Christ's second millennium, to the great Jubilee, placed Christianity in kind of new Advent. That is, in an attitude of expectation, of hope, in view of a deep renovation."

      Pointing out the fundamental topics of the encyclical -Christ, man and the Church, Cardinal Biffi highlighted their "strong Christ-centered" character, according to which Jesus is "presented as the only Savior" of all men and therefore cannot be compared "with the founders of other religions, prophets, and all the others big personalities of history. No. Christ is unique and His reality is significant also for the non Christians, that can't avoid recognizing the novelty introduced in the history with his coming."