After Cardinal Marc Ouellet celebrated Mass for the opening of the Ecclesia in America congress, Pope Benedict XVI arrived at St. Peter's Basilica to address congress participants. Below is the English portion of that address. The rest of the address was in Spanish, and the Holy Father spoke about the Exhortation that was released after the 1997 Synod of Bishops for America. He said the exhortation looked at the challenges faced in America, challenges that are still present today including social and economic challenges such as painful situations of emigration, violence, especially violence caused by narcotrafficking, corruption, and large gaps between the rich and the poor. After naming those challenges the Holy Father said the following:

All these important questions require careful study.  Yet in addition to their technical evaluation, the Catholic Church is convinced that the light for an adequate solution can only come from encounter with the living Christ, which gives rise to attitudes and ways of acting based on love and truth.  This is the decisive force which will transform the American continent.

Dear friends, the love of Christ impels us to devote ourselves without reserve to proclaiming his Name throughout America, bringing it freely and enthusiastically to the hearts of all its inhabitants.  There is no more rewarding or beneficial work than this.  There is no greater service that we can provide to our brothers and sisters.  They are thirsting for God.  For this reason, we ought to take up this commitment with conviction and joyful dedication, encouraging priests, deacons, consecrated men and women and pastoral agents to purify and strengthen their interior lives ever more fully through a sincere relationship with the Lord and a worthy and frequent reception of the sacraments.  This will be encouraged by suitable catechesis and a correct and ongoing doctrinal formation marked by complete fidelity to the word of God and the Church’s magisterium and aimed at offering a response to the deepest questions and aspirations of the human heart.  The witness of your faith will thus be more eloquent and incisive, and you will grow in unity in the fulfilment of your apostolate.  A renewed missionary spirit and zealous generosity in your commitment will be an irreplaceable contribution to what the universal Church expects and needs from the Church in America.

As a model of openness to God’s grace and of perfect concern for others, there shines forth on your continent the figure of Mary Most Holy, Star of the New Evangelization, invoked throughout America under the glorious title of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  As I commend this Congress to her maternal and loving protection, I impart to you, the organizers and participants, my Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of abundant divine graces.

--- (CNS Photo/Paul Haring)