HOMEPAGE for this issue: July 13, 2011 // Download PDF Version // Click to install/update Adobe Reader on your computer

Pope marks 60 years as a priest, bestows palliums on archbishops

By John Thavis 

CNS photo/Paul Haring Pope Benedict XVI arrives for Mass on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican June 29. During the liturgy, the pope gave a pallium to 41 archbishops from 25 countries. The Mass also marked the pope's 60th anniversary as a priest. See more photos at bottom of this story.

VATICAN CITY (CNS)—Celebrating Mass with archbishops from 25 countries, Pope Benedict XVI reflected on his 60 years as a priest, calling it a demanding and “awe-inspiring” ministry that brought him closer to God.

The pope’s unusually personal recollection came June 29, the anniversary of his priestly ordination in Bavaria in 1951 and the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, the patron saints of Rome.

During the three-hour-long Mass, he gave 41 archbishops the woolen pallium as a sign of their communion with the pope and their pastoral responsibility as shepherds. Among them were four prelates from the United States, including former Denver auxiliary bishop now-Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, and one from Canada.

The liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica began with a fanfare of trumpets. The pope smiled as he processed toward an altar ringed with flowers, pausing to greet a delegations sent by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

The pope devoted most of his homily to his 60 years of priestly ministry, and twice he excused himself for perhaps speaking too long about his recollections. He said he felt he had to look back on “the things that have left their mark.”

“‘I no longer call you servants, but friends.’ Sixty years on from the day of my priestly ordination, I hear once again deep within me these words of Jesus that were addressed to us new priests at the end of the ordination ceremony by the archbishop, Cardinal Faulhaber, in his slightly frail yet firm voice,” the pope said.

“I knew, at that moment, the Lord himself was speaking to me in a very personal way,” he said.

The pope said he felt called into the circle of those God knows in a special way, to a friendship that implies responsibilities.

“He trusts me to proclaim his word, to explain it aright and to bring it to the people of today,” he said.

This calling of the priest to friendship with God is “so awe-inspiring that one can feel daunted as the decades go by amid so many experiences of one’s own frailty and his inexhaustible goodness,” he said.

The pope placed the pallium, a stole made from lamb’s wool, around the shoulders of the archbishops as they knelt before him. In his sermon, the pope said the pallium signified the “yoke of friendship with Christ,” the pastoral duty to be a shepherd and communion with the pope.

“It means that we must be shepherds for unity and in unity, and that it is only in the unity represented by Peter that we truly lead people to Christ,” he said.

The pallium is presented every year to new archbishops or those who have been assigned to a new archdiocese. Four new archbishops—including Archbishop Guire Poulard of Port-au-Prince, Haiti—were unable to attend the ceremony and received their palliums at home.

In addition to Archbishop Gomez, those receiving the pallium included Archbishops Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio, J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, and Gerald Lacroix of Quebec.

Speaking at his noon blessing after the Mass, Pope Benedict thanked Catholics around the world for the prayers they offered on the occasion of his 60th anniversary as a priest. At the Vatican’s request, Church communities around the world joined in 60 hours of eucharistic adoration to mark the anniversary.

The pope also thanked pilgrims, friends and family members of the new archbishops in a special audience with them in the Paul VI hall June 30.

Greeting them in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Lithuanian and Slovenian, the pope welcomed all those who took part in the pallium ceremony and reminded them that the woolen band is “a sign of communion in faith and love and in the governance of God’s people.”

He told the archbishops he was praying for them and that nothing should come before their love for Christ, which is fundamental for their pastoral service.

The pope then greeted each new archbishop as well as the two or three family members or friends each archbishop had chosen to accompany him on stage to meet the pope.