Church Is Young and Joyful, Says Pope Benedict

The following comes from Zenit:

After viewing a documentary on the first five years of his pontificate, Benedict XVI noted that although the Church experiences periods of crisis and suffering, it remains joyful and young.

After watching "Fünf Jahre Papst Benedikt" (Five Years: Pope Benedict XVI), a film produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk, a public broadcaster in Bavaria, Germany, the Pope thanked the filmmakers "for this extraordinary spiritual journey, which has enabled us to relive and see again determinant and culminating moments of these five years of my Petrine service and of the life of the Church herself."

"It was for me personally very moving to see some moments, above all the one in which the Lord placed on my shoulders the Petrine service," he continued. "A weight that no one could carry by himself with his limited strength, but which can be carried because the Lord carries it and carries me.

"It seems to me that in this film we saw the richness of the life of the Church, the multiplicity of cultures, of charisms, of different gifts that live in the Church and how in this multiplicity and great diversity the same one Church lives.

"And the Petrine primacy has this mandate to render the unity visible and concrete, in the historical, concrete multiplicity, in the unity of the present, past, future and the eternal."

Benedict XVI reflected that the Church, although it suffers, is "a joyful Church."

"It is not an aged Church, but we have seen that the Church is young and that faith creates joy," he added.

The Pope also noted that the film ends with a "visit to the Mother of God," and he reflected that it is Mary "who teaches us humility, obedience and the joy that God is with us."

The Holy Father thanked Michael Mandlik and Gerhard Fuchs, the director and executive director, respectively, "for this magnificent moment that you have given us."