Pope: Pauline Year is a Call to Mission

"The Pauline year, evangelization, communion in the Church and full unity among Christians...let us now pray for these great intentions"

VATICAN CITY (Zenit) - Benedict XVI says the newly inaugurated Pauline Jubilee Year is an invitation to every Christian to be a missionary of the Gospel.

The Pope affirmed this Sunday before praying the Angelus with thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square. On Saturday, he inaugurated the Pauline year at a ceremony at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

"Historians in fact situate the birth of Saul -- who later became Paul -- about seven to 10 years after Christ's," the Holy Father noted. "Thus, after the passage of about 2,000 years, I wanted to call this special jubilee, which will naturally have Rome as its center, especially the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls and the place of martyrdom at Tre Fontane.

"But it will involve the whole Church, beginning with Tarsus, Paul's city of birth, and the other Pauline places in present day Turkey and the Holy Land, which are pilgrimage destinations, as well as the island of Malta, where the apostle came after a shipwreck and sowed the fruitful seed of the Gospel."

The Pontiff said the "horizon of the Pauline Year cannot but be universal because St. Paul was, par excellence, the apostle of those who, in regard to the Jews, were 'distant,' and who, 'thanks to the blood of Christ,' were drawn 'near.'"

"For this reason, today too, in a world that has become 'small,' but where many have not yet met the Lord Jesus, the Jubilee of St. Paul invites all Christians to be missionaries of the Gospel," the Pope affirmed. "This missionary dimension must always be accompanied by that of unity, represented by St. Peter, the 'rock' on which Jesus Christ built his Church.

"As is underscored by the liturgy, the charisms of the two great apostles are complementary in building up the one people of God and Christians cannot offer a valid witness to Christ if they are not united."

"The Pauline year, evangelization, communion in the Church and full unity among Christians," Benedict XVI listed, "let us now pray for these great intentions, entrusting them to the celestial intercession of Mary Most Holy, Mother of the Church and Queen of the Apostles."