Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J. On Benedict XVI And Paul VI

I was very struck by the Holy Father's ( Benedict XVI )

concluding words to the Fathers of the 35th General Congregation on February 21, 2008:

"As my Predecessors have said to you on various occasions, the Church needs you, relies on you and continues to turn to you with trust, particularly to reach those physical and spiritual places which others do not reach or have difficulty in reaching.

Paul VI's words remain engraved on your hearts:

"Wherever in the Church, even in the most difficult and extreme fields, at the crossroads of ideologies, in the social trenches, there has been and there is confrontation between the burning exigencies of man and the perennial message of the Gospel, here also there have been, and there are, Jesuits"

(Address to the 32nd General Congregation of the Jesuits, 3 December 1974; ORE, 12 December, n. 2, p. 4.)."

Link to the full speech of Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J. at Regis College in Toronto Canada (here)

More (here)