FRANCE:POPE BENEDICT XVI yesterday spoke out against lay people performing the functions of priests, writes Lara Marlowein Lourdes
"Priests are a gift from God for the church," the pontiff told French bishops.
"Where their specific missions are concerned, priests cannot delegate their functions to the faithful," the pope said.
The problem of priestly vocations is especially acute in France, where one northern diocese has only one priest to serve 27 parishes. As David Rice, a former Dominican priest, wrote in this newspaper in July 2008: "In essence the lay people have taken over the local church and run it for themselves."
The pope also spoke of his concern at the deteriorating institutions of marriage and the family, which he described as "today experiencing real turbulence".
The pontiff singled out those who are divorced and remarried, saying: "The church, which cannot oppose the will of Christ, firmly maintains the principle of the indissolubility of marriage . . . Hence initiatives aimed at blessing irregular unions cannot be admitted."
On Saturday, the pope warned 260,000 worshippers in Paris to "shun the worship of idols". Our modern world has created its own idols, he said. "St Paul explains to the Colossians that insatiable greed is a form of idolatry, and he reminds his disciple Timothy that love of money is the root of all evil."
After the candledlit procession in Lourdes on Saturday night, Pope Benedict recounted how 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous "saw a light, and in this light she saw a young lady who was beautiful, more beautiful than any other . . . Lourdes is one of the places chosen by God for his beauty to be reflected with particular brightness, hence the importance here of the symbol of light."
The pope dedicated his homily yesterday to the cross. "The instrument of torture which, on Good Friday, manifested God's judgment on the world, has become a source of life, pardon, mercy, a sign of reconciliation and peace," he said.
In his autobiography, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote: "I am convinced that the crisis of the church which we are living through today was largely caused by the disintegration of the liturgy."
The pope's preference for traditional liturgy was obvious this weekend. He has replaced the 1960s silver papal pastoral staff with a gold Greek cross dating back to the mid-19th century.
He asked that communion wafers consecrated for his visit be stored in ciboriums of precious metal, not earthenware, as had become the custom.