Aug 5, 2009 / 08:26 am
In his first general audience at Castel Gandolfo this summer, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed the example of St. Jean Marie Vianney, who provides priests with an example of how to minister in a culture under the influence of moral relativism.
The Holy Father began by noting that yesterday the Church celebrated the 150th anniversary of his “birth into Heaven.”
He then spoke about the childhood of the Curé d’Ars, his illiteracy as a child and his struggles with his seminary studies.
Nevertheless, Pope Benedict continued, “in his pastoral service, as simple as it was extraordinarily fruitful, this anonymous priest in a remote village in southern France was able to become one with his ministry, to become, even in a visible and universally recognizable way, alter Christus, the image of the Good Shepherd, who, unlike the mercenary, gives his life for his sheep.”