Church must proclaim its message of hope to all people, pope says

[lemonbeam]

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The church must bear witness to and proclaim its message of hope to all humanity, Pope Benedict XVI said.

The Gospel guides people toward the building of one human family living in justice and peace “under the paternity of the one God, who is good and merciful,” he said in his Sunday Angelus address Oct. 18 at the Vatican.

The pope said World Mission Sunday, which is observed Oct. 18 in most countries, reminds the faithful of their duty “to proclaim and bear witness to the Gospel to everyone, in particular to those who still don’t know it.”

“The church exists to proclaim this message of hope to all of humanity, which in our time ‘has experienced marvelous achievements but which seems to have lost its sense of ultimate realities and of existence itself,’” he said, citing Pope John Paul II’s encyclical “Redemptoris Missio” (“The Mission of the Redeemer”).

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