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Catholic World News News Feature

Brazil visit by Pope Benedict confirmed for May 2007 March 16, 2006

Archbishop Raymundo Damasceno Assis of Aparecido, Brazil, has confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI will travel to his archdiocese in May 2007 for the opening of the 5th general conference of the Latin American bishops conference (CELAM) at the Marian shrine there.

At a meeting last October with several leading prelates from Latin America, Pope Benedict announced his intention to attend the next meeting of CELAM. It was the Pontiff himself who chose the Aparecida shrine as the site for that meeting.

The shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, about 110 miles from Sao Paulo, was set up after a group of fishermen pulled a broken statue of the Immaculate Conception from a river bed. Inspired by the dark, smiling image of the Virgin, they prayed for her help, and were rewarded with an enormous catch. The shrine was set up near the scene of that incident, devotion to "the Aparecida" grew, and Our Lady of Aparecida became the patroness of Brazil.

Pope Benedict chose the location, the archbishop said, as an important "point of reference" for the Church in Brazil. Each year more than 8 million people make pilgrimages to the shrine.

"It was a surprise for us; no one expected that the Pope would come to Brazil," he said. The papal visit will be a welcome challenge for organizers. Although Aparecida is a small city, it has become accustomed to playing host to 150,000 pilgrims or more each week. For the papal visit, however, the Brazilian organizers expect at least 600,000 people, and perhaps over 1 million.

The exact dates of the papal visit have not yet been fixed, the Brazilian archbishop said. Nor is it yet clear whether the Pope will travel solely to Brazil, or make some other stops in the Western hemisphere during the same trip.

Archbishops Damasceno Assis was in Rome this week to meet with Alberto Gasbarri, the Vatican official who does advance work for papal travel. Gasbarri is expected to visit Brazil sometime in the fall to continue planning.

Archbishop Damasceno Assis did say that one aspect of the trip is easy to predict: Pope Benedict will stop in either Brasilia or Sao Paulo on his way to Aparecida, since there is no international airport close to the Marian shrine.