News

204 Letters to the Pope
By Paul Collins
August 12, 2008

During World Youth Day Catholics for Ministry asked for people to write personal letters to Pope Benedict XVI telling him about the crisis in ministry facing the church in Australia. We did this at very short notice, but in the end 204 letters were sent to Pope Benedict in Rome. We decided to send the letters directly by post after some discussion of how we might get them to the Pope while he was in Sydney for World Youth Day. We decided that the security around him was too tight and the chance of him ever seeing the letters was slim. They would have probably been 'lost' somewhere or ignored.

To be completely honest we have to admit that all we can do is simply hope and pray the method we chose will work. Experience seems to indicate that letter-writing influences attitudes in the Vatican, but that the pressure has to be maintained.

We are also considering sending a selection of the letters to the new papal nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Lazarotto, to give him some idea of the opinions of Australian Catholics.