News from Around:

CASTEL GANDOLFO, ITA — Cradle Catholics have not done enough to show people that God exists and can bring true fulfillment to everyone, Pope Benedict XVI has told a group of his former students. “We, who have been able to know [Christ] since our youth, may we ask forgiveness because we bring so little of the light of his face to people; so little certainty comes from us that he exists, he’s present and he is the greatness that everyone is waiting for.”

It also is up to Christians to make God known to the world, the Pope said, and older generations may not have done their best. “We want to ask [God] to forgive us, that he renew us with the living water of his spirit and that he helps us to celebrate properly the sacred mysteries,” .

Summarising the discussions, Cardinal Schönborn said participants felt that World Youth Day events in Madrid represented a fresh “boost of renewed hope” for the Church. Schönborn said older generations had suffered by first living their faith at a time when Church life was thriving, and now watching parishes lose parishioners. But today’s young Catholics seem to realize they are a minority in a secular, relativistic world and have shown their “undaunted willingness to give witness to their peers in such an environment.”  Read the whole report from the UK’s Catholic Herald.

News from ‘Round Here:

Sunday morning found the Mid-Atlantic fully engaged in the middle of Hurricane Irene. It knocked out the power for over sixty hours (others had it much worse) but still threw me off my game for a while. Monday, the news broke about the Archbishop, I hung out with a special guest afterwards and then worked the desk an unique moment after that. No power demanded a cell phone repair and a haircut to occupy after-hours.

The professional ministers’ orientation was Tuesday (but I was multi-tasking a little through it with a middle school planning  call and drafting a plan for World Youth Day ‘13.) After the newbies were out the door, I hosted a birthday gathering for the evangelization department and went to an evaluation meeting for the Catholic  Schools Convocation (which I didn’t attend, but did help plan)

Wednesday involved knocking off a check-list of six tasks, including drafting a job description and phone calls to a few youth contacts, a meeting with the African-American Ministry Office and then off to sit-in on the planning for the Contact meeting.

Trying to catch-up from my WYD ‘11 experience, Thursday began a five day out of office weekend with a good task list. First day out was mostly phone calls and an e-mail or two, but it was a start.

Friday and Saturday were much more recuperative… only a blog entry or two, but a fair amount of naps and especially college football on the tube.