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Pope Benedict XVI Sends Greetings to Knights
In greetings to the 126th Supreme Convention, Pope Benedict XVI urged the Knights to be a “leaven of evangelical renewal”in the Church and society.The new challenges facing the world, Pope Benedict said, are a call to the Knights to remain faithful to its high ideals.
The pope’s greetings were conveyed in a letter from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state. Cardinal Bertone was the pope’s personal envoy to last year’s Supreme Convention.
The pope noted that the Order was meeting during the Church’s observance of the Year of St. Paul. Fraternal charity was a hallmark of the first Christians, the pope said, and the Order’s principles of charity, unity and fraternity echo the early Church. He also complimented the Knights for its programs of spiritual and catechetical formation for men.
Pope Benedict summoned the Knights to a “mature” witness of the Catholic faith in order to respond to the “breakdown of society” marked by “polarization, anger…and a weakening of moral” values.
Be “heralds of a new humanity” Pope Benedict told the Knights. Greetings to the convention were also received from the heads of state of the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Philippines, among others.