Pope Benedict notes link between Council of Trent, Pope John Paul in reforming seminaries

August 20, 2009

In his fifth Wednesday general audience devoted to the priesthood, Pope Benedict reflected on St. John Eudes, the French apostle of devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary who, amid the ravages of the Thirty Years’ War, founded the Congregation of Jesus and Mary in 1643 to form seminarians. In doing so, the saint helped implement in France the eight-decade-old decrees of the Council of Trent on the establishment of seminaries.

Pope Benedict added that in our own time, Pope John Paul II has issued the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis, wherein the late Pontiff “took up and actualized the norms of the Council of Trent. For him, for us, this is a real point of departure for a genuine reform of priestly life and apostolate, and it is also the central point so that the ‘new evangelization’ is not simply an attractive slogan, but rather is translated into reality.”

Pope Benedict concluded the audience “by addressing to all the exhortation of St. John Eudes, who said thus to priests: ‘Give yourselves to Jesus to enter into the immensity of his great Heart, which contains the Heart of his Holy Mother and of all the saints, and to lose yourselves in this abyss of love, of charity, of mercy, of humility, of purity, of patience, of submission, and of holiness.’”

 

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Further information:

• Udienza Generale, 19 agosto 2009 (Holy See)
• Zenit translation
• Pope Stresses Need for Solid Priestly Formation (Vatican Radio)
• Pope Benedict: Audiences (Holy See)
• Pope John Paul: I Will Give You Shepherds (Pastores Dabo Vobis)