VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE   
   YEAR XXII - # 067   
   DATE 09-04-2015   
      
   Summary:   
   - Francis receives the president of the Slovak Republic, 25 years after the   
   restoration of diplomatic relations with the Holy See   
   - The Holy Father addresses the Patriarchal Synod of the Armenian Catholic   
   Church   
   - Presentation of the Holy See pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale   
   - Audiences   
      
   ___________________________________________________________   
      
    Francis receives the president of the Slovak Republic, 25 years after the   
   restoration of diplomatic relations with the Holy See   
    Vatican City, 9 April 2015 (VIS) - This morning the Holy Father Francis   
   received in audience, in the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the president of the   
   Slovak Republic, Andrej Kiska, who subsequently met with Msgr. Antoine   
   Camilleri, Under-Secretary for Relations with States, in the Secretariat of   
   State.   
    During the cordial discussions, which took place shortly before the 25th   
   anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and   
   the then Czech and Slovak Federative Republic on 19 April 1990 following St.   
   John Paul II's visit to the country, satisfaction was expressed for the good   
   bilateral relations sealed by the Agreements in force and by the fruitful   
   dialogue between the Church and the civil authorities.   
    The Parties then turned their attention to the current International context,   
   with particular attention to the challenges affecting certain areas of the   
   world, especially the Middle East, and the importance of the protection of the   
   dignity of the human person.   
      
   ___________________________________________________________   
      
    The Holy Father addresses the Patriarchal Synod of the Armenian Catholic   
   Church   
    Vatican City, 9 April 2015 (VIS) - This morning Pope Francis received in   
   audience twenty bishops of the Synod of the Armenian Catholic Church, who will   
   attend next Sunday's Holy Mass to be celebrated for faithful of Armenian rite   
   in   
   St. Peter's Basilica, during which St. Gregory of Narek will be proclaimed a   
   Doctor of the Church.   
    In the discourse he addressed to the bishops, the Holy Father remarked that on   
   Sunday they will "raise a prayer of Christian intercession for the sons and   
   daughters of your beloved people, who were made victims a hundred years ago",   
   and invoked Divine Mercy "so that it might help all, in the love for truth and   
   justice, to heal every wound and to expedite concrete gestures of   
   reconciliation   
   and peace between the nations that still have not managed to reach a reasonable   
   consensus on the interpretation of these sad events".   
    Francis greeted all the clergy and lay faithful of the Armenian Catholic   
   Church, many of whom have accompanied the bishops to Rome in these days, as   
   well   
   as "those who live in the countries of the diaspora, such as the United States,   
   Latin America, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, up to the Motherland". He added, "I   
   think with particular sadness of those areas, such as that of Aleppo, that a   
   hundred years ago were a safe haven for the few survivors. In such regions the   
   stability of Christians, not only Armenians, has latterly been placed in   
   danger".   
    "Your people, whom tradition recognises as the first to convert to   
   Christianity   
   in 301, has a two thousand-year history and preserves an admirable patrimony of   
   spirituality and culture, united with a capacity for recovery amid the many   
   persecutions and trials to which it has been subjected. I invite you always to   
   cultivate a sentiment of acknowledgement of the Lord, for having been capable   
   of   
   maintaining fidelity to Him even during the most difficult periods. It is   
   important, furthermore, to ask of God the gift of wisdom of the heart: the   
   commemoration of the victims of a hundred years ago indeed places us before the   
   darkness of the mysterium iniquitatis".   
    "As the Gospel tells us, from the depths of the human heart there may emerge   
   the darkest powers, capable of planning the systematic annihilation of one's   
   brother, of considering him an enemy, an adversary, or even without the same   
   human dignity", he observed. "But for believers the issue of the evil committed   
   by man also introduces the mystery of participation in the redemptive Passion:   
   a   
   number of sons and daughters of the Armenian nation were capable of pronouncing   
   Christ's name to the point of shedding their blood or of death by starvation   
   during the interminable exodus they were forced to undertake".   
    "The painful pages in the history of your people continue, in a certain sense,   
   the Passion of Christ, but in each one of these there is also the germ of the   
   Resurrection. There is no lack of commitment among you, Pastors, to the   
   education of the lay faithful to enable them to interpret reality with new   
   eyes,   
   in order to be able to say every day: my people consists not only of those who   
   suffer for Christ, but above all of those who are risen in Him. Therefore it is   
   important to remember the past, in order to draw from it the new lymph needed   
   to   
   nurture the present with the glorious announcement of the Gospel and with the   
   witness of charity. I encourage you to support the path of continuing formation   
   of priests and consecrated persons. They are your first collaborators; the   
   communion between them and you will be strengthened by the exemplary fraternity   
   they may observe in the Synod and with the Patriarch".   
    The Pope expressed his gratitude to those who made efforts to alleviate the   
   sufferings of their ancestors, making special reference to Pope Benedict XV   
   "who   
   intervened before the Sultan Mehmet V to bring an end to the massacre of the   
   Armenians", and who was "a great friend of the Christian Orient: he established   
   the Congregation for the Oriental Churches and the Pontifical Oriental   
   Institute, and in 1920 he inscribed St. Ephrem the Syrian among the Doctors of   
   the Universal Church". Francis continued, "I am pleased that our meeting takes   
   place on the eve of the same gesture I will have the pleasure of performing on   
   Sunday regarding the great figure of St. Gregory of Narek".   
    "To his intercession, I entrust in particular the ecumenical dialogue between   
   the Catholic Armenian Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church, aware of the   
   fact that the 'ecumenism of blood' has already been achieved through the   
   martyrdom and persecution that took place one hundred years ago", he concluded.   
   "I now invoke the Lord's blessing upon you and your faithful, and I ask you not   
   to forget to pray for me".   
      
   ___________________________________________________________   
      
    Presentation of the Holy See pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale   
    Vatican City, 9 April 2015 (VIS) - "In the beginning ... the Word became   
   Flesh"   
   is the name of the Holy See's pavilion at the upcoming 56th Venice Biennale of   
   Art (9 May to 22 November 2015), which was presented this morning by Cardinal   
   Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture and   
   commissioner of the Pavilion, along with Paolo Baratta, president of the   
   Biennale and Micol Forte, curator of the Vatican Museums Collection of   
   Contemporary Art and of the pavilion.   
    During the press conference, held in the Holy See Press Office, Cardinal   
   Ravasi   
   explained that, continuing from the theme of the Holy See's first contribution   
   to the 2013 Venice Biennale, the 2015 pavilion will see to re-establish the   
   dialogue between art and faith and the need to examine, especially at an   
   international level, the relationship between the Church and contemporary art.   
   "Continuing from the first edition, the Holy See pavilion of the 56th Venice   
   Biennale will develop the theme of the 'Beginning', with an itinerary leading   
   from the Old to the New Testament, making 'logos' and 'flesh' the terms of a   
   relationship constantly in progress".   
    "The reference to Genesis, understood as Creation, De-Creation, Re-Creation,   
   in   
   2013 constituted the object of a reflection that is now further developed in   
   the   
   Prologue of the Gospel of John. In this latter, two essential poles are   
   highlighted: the transcendent Word that is 'in the Beginning', and at the same   
   time, reveals the dialogical and communicational nature of the God of Jesus   
   Christ; and the Word that becomes 'flesh', body, bringing the presence of God   
   into the essence of humanity, especially where it appears to be wounded and   
   suffering. The 'vertical-transcendent' dimension and the 'horizontal-immanent'   
   dimension of flesh thus constitute in this sense the axes of research. It is   
   necessary to refer to these axes - and their intersection - to understand the   
   individual works and the dialogue that is interwoven between them within the   
   exhibition space.   
    Micol Forti presented the works and artists represented in the Pavilion,   
   remarking that the "indissoluble bond between 'logos' and 'flesh' produces a   
   dialectic dynamism ... that inspires, in artists as well as in the public,   
   reflection on the binomial that is at the root of humanity. The three artists,   
   all young, of differing provenance, experience, ethical and aesthetic vision,   
   have been required to flesh out the idea evoked in the Prologue of the Gospel   
   of   
   John". They include the Colombian Monika Bravo who, Forti explained, "has   
   developed a narrative, deconstructed and recomposed on six screens and the same   
   number of transparent panels, positioned on strongly coloured walls. In each   
   composition, Nature, the Word (written and spoken) and artistic abstraction are   
   presented as active elements of heuristic vision, open to a margin of   
   experimental indeterminacy in the development of a new perceptive space and   
   sensory fullness".   
    The Macedonian Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva has designed a "monumental, architectural   
   installation, whose 'fabric', almost a sort of skin or mantle, welcomes the   
   visitor in a dimension that is simultaneously physical and symbolic. [The work   
   is] made of organic waste material, in a journey from 'ready-made' to   
   're-made'". Forti continued, "Flesh transforms into history in the reality   
   offered without falsification" by the photographer Mario Macilau, from   
   Mozambique. The series of nine black and white photographs taken in Maputo,   
   capital of Mozambique, depicts the street children who at a young age are   
   compelled to face life in terms of survival. "It is not a photo-reportage, but   
   rather a poetic work that reverses the connections between now and before, near   
   and far, the visible and what cannot be seen".   
      
   ___________________________________________________________   
      
    Audiences   
    Vatican City, 9 April 2015 (VIS) - Today, the Holy Father received in   
   audience:   
    - Cardinal George Pell, prefect of the Secreteriat for the Economy;   
    - Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, archbishop of Perugia - Citta della Pieve,   
   Italy;   
    - Archbishop Adolfo Tito Yllana, apostolic nuncio in Australia;   
    - Msgr. Giovanni Pietro Dal Toso, secretary of the Pontifical Council "Cor   
   Unum".   
      
   ___________________________________________________________   
      
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