Celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of a town founded to be a model of Gospel peace and justice, Pope Benedict XVI said Christians today must find ways to infuse their cities and nations with Gospel values while welcoming and respecting people with other beliefs. In his evening visit May 13 to Sansepolcro, named after the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, the pope urged the townspeople to use the anniversary to emulate Sts. Arcanus and Aegidius, who established the town after returning from Jerusalem. The saints saw the town as a place where Christians could fulfill their vocation to build a society marked by peace through the practice of justice, he said.
“Today there is a particular need for the church’s service to the world to be expressed through enlightened lay faithful,” involved in civil society “with a desire to serve that goes beyond their private interests and beyond partisan views,” he said. “The common good counts more than the good of the individual, and it’s up to Christians to contribute to the birth of new public ethics,” the pope said. The pope had arrived in Sansepolcro in the midst of a rain storm that forced him to cancel a visit to La Verna, site of a Franciscan shrine marking the place where St. Francis of Assisi received the stigmata. Pope Benedict had started the day in Arezzo, celebrating Mass in a park with an estimated 30,000 people, including Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti.
SANSEPOLCRO, Italy (CNS)