Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Around 300,000 people from around the world are expected to turn up for a meeting between Benedict XVI and ecclesial movements, set to take place in St Peter's Square on the vigil of Pentecost. This was announced this morning by Mgr Josef Clemens, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, as he presenting the second world congress of ecclesial movements and of new communities in the Vatican. The congress will take place in Rocca di Papa from 31 May to 2 June 2006, and the encounter of the pope will follow.

The congress, organised by the Pontifical Council for the Laity, will have the theme: "The beauty of being a Christian and the joy of communicating this", inspired by the homily preached by Benedict XVI at the mass launching his pontificate. The three main talks will be entrusted to the Cardinals Christoph Schonborn, O.P., Marc Ouellet, P.S.S. and Angelo Scola: they will tackle Christological (Christ, "the most beautiful of Adam's sons"), church ("The beauty of being Christians") and pastoral ("Church movements and new communities in the mission of the Church: priorities and prospects") issues. [More...]

"During a conversation in Cracow last July, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, O.P., the archbishop of Vienna, proposed that he and I organize a conference to discuss the growing gap between America and Europe, the roots of that gap as analyzed in my book The Cube and the Cathedral, and the possibilities of strengthening the trans-Atlantic Catholic dialogue and the new evangelization on both continents. I readily agreed, and the conference, which included some fifty public intellectuals from "Old Europe," "New Europe," and the United States, met in April in the archbishop's palace in Vienna. Many of us were housed in a former barracks of the Teutonic Knights; to have come from Poland, where I had been visiting, to the barracks of the Teutonic Knights was ... historically interesting, to say the least. (Why? Google "Battle of Grunwald, 1410"). But the Deutschordenshaus is a story for another day."

"Cardinal Schoenborn, who makes great sense in a half-dozen languages, provided the intellectual glue that held an international, interdisciplinary conversation together; as an American present, Dr. William Hurlbut of Stanford, put it, "Coming from California, it's refreshing and amazing to hear words of truth and light in the accents of Arnold Schwarzenegger." [More...]

May. 02 (CWNews.com) - Only by building on its rich spiritual patrimony can Europe flourish in the future. That was the message Pope Benedict XVI sent to a conference jointly organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow, being held in Vienna this week.

The Pope's message, conveyed by Cardinal Paul Poupard, welcomed the effort to cooperate in "courageous and renewed evangelical action in the Europe of the 3rd millennium." The Pope said that respect for different spiritual traditions has enriched Europe, encouraging the tradition of respect for human rights that has removed "grave obstacles to the integral development of nations."

The papal message thanked the Moscow patriarchate for the "encouraging cooperation" that had led to this week's meeting. The Pontiff also thanked Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn for hosting the event.