Cloistered Religious Serve as Church's Heart, Pope Says

[Catholic_Press]

Rome, Italy, Jun 24, 2010 / 10:34 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaking to a group of cloistered Dominican nuns after having blessed the restored statue of Mary in Rome’s Monte Mario quarter, Pope Benedict referred to them as the heart of the Church which provides blood to the rest of the body. In their work and prayer, together with Christ, he said, they are the “heart” of the Church and in their desire for God’s love they approach the ultimate goal.

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[Dale_M]

Video of the Pope’s visit!

romereports.com/palio/Papal-audience-on-the-Summa-Theologiae-of-Saint-Thomas-Aquinas-english-2351.html

The Pope and his entourage of cardinals (and apparently a camera crew) were allowed inside the cloister.

The convent houses the seventh-century icon of the Virgin “Hagiosoritissa”, known as Our Lady of St. Luke, as well as precious relics of St. Dominic, St. Catherine of Siena and other Dominican saints.

“You, who are well aware of the effectiveness of prayer”, he told the nuns in his address, “daily experience how many graces of sanctification it can obtain for the Church”.

Benedict XVI encouraged the religious “to be grateful to Divine Providence for the sublime and gratuitous gift of the monastic vocation, to which the Lord called you without any merit on your part”.

“The contemplative life which, from the hands of St. Dominic, you received in the form of the cloister, makes you living and vital members in the heart of the Lord’s mystical body which is the Church. And just as the heart causes the blood to circulate and keeps the entire body alive, so your hidden lives with Christ, imbued with work and prayer, contribute to maintaining the Church, the instrument of salvation for all mankind whom the Lord redeemed with His Blood”.

More quotes from his address to the nuns can be found here:
thecatholicspirit.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3974&Itemid=34