First work crafted by Francis out next week

The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will issue his long-awaited apostolic exhortation on evangelisation next week under the title, Evangelii Gaudium or “The Joy of the Gospel”, writes Robert Mickens.

It is the most important teaching document that Francis has personally written since becoming Bishop of Rome just over eight months ago and it will be unveiled officially on Tuesday at a Vatican press conference. However, the Pope will symbolically consign the text to three dozen representatives of the Catholic people and clergy at a Mass tomorrow in St Peter’s Square to bring to a close the Year of Faith. “The Pope’s exhortation, therefore, is a mission entrusted to every baptised person to become an evangeliser,” said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation and chief organiser of the faith year.

Unlike Francis’ first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, which he said was mostly written by Benedict XVI, this new exhortation is the first major magisterial document the Argentinian Pope has composed by himself. He surprised the 15-member coordinating council of the Synod of Bishops on 13 June when he announced that the exhortation would not be based on the draft the council was to prepare for the Pope after the October 2012 Synod assembly on the New Evangelisation. He told the council he had decided to write his own “exhortation” on “evangelisation in general”. He said it would incorporate the ideas of the last synod “in a wider framework” and be issued at the close of the Year of Faith.

Pope Francis is to be joined at tomorrow’s liturgy by all the patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches and other leading prelates. The outdoor Mass will be celebrated in the presence of what the Vatican believes to be the relics of St Peter. The bones, found in a complex of mausoleums beneath St Peter’s basilica in 1942, were tested in the 1960s and found to belong to a 60- to 70-year-old man. This finding, along with an inscription, led Pope Paul VI to announce on 26 June 1968 that the relics of St Peter had been identified. It is the first time that the reliquary with the alleged mortal remains of the “Prince of the Apostles” is to go on public display.

Those at the liturgy will be asked to contribute to a collection for typhoon relief in the Philippines. Archbishop Fisichella said it would be “a sign of solidarity and concrete participation with those who share the same faith, undergoing a period of extreme need”.

This evening, as a prelude to the concluding Mass, Pope Francis is to receive 35 people into the catechumenate, the preparation period for full sacramental initiation into the Church. He will do so at a prayer gathering with 500 people from 47 nations who are already catechumens, along with sponsors.
In yet another liturgical event connected to the end of the Year of Faith, the Pope was to mark a Day for Contemplative Life with a private visit for Vespers on Thursday to a community of Camaldolese nuns at their monastery on Rome’s Aventine Hill.