Vatican City, Jun 16, 2004 / 22:00 pm
The Holy Father laid out the priorities for the Church in Colombia at the first of this year’s “ad limina” visits of the Colombian ecclesiastical provinces which took place this morning: peace and reconciliation, ardent evangelization, defense of family life, and continual fostering of the encouraging number of religious vocations.
The Pope pointed to the “fruits of holiness” in the Colombian Church with the recent beatifications of Fr. Mariano Euse and Mother Laura Montoya, “venerated as a mother of the indigenous,” as he addressed the bishops from the Colombian ecclesiastical provinces of Medellin, Barranquilla, Cali, Cartagena, Manizales, Popayan and Santa Fe de Antioquia.
The Holy Father encouraged them to keep up their hope for the future, “while working for the service of the kingdom of God, spurred on by Christ's words, 'Duc in altum.'”
“With these words of Christ which I have proposed as a motto for the third Christian millennium, I want to encourage you to continue, without disappointments and with total confidence in the Lord in the task of evangelization, the primordial mission of the Church.”