Pope Urges More Eucharistic Adoration

Greets Religious Sisters in Rome for Founder's Beatification

VATICAN CITY, MAY 7, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is urging a promotion of love for the Eucharist, so that there will be more adorers of the Blessed Sacrament.

The Pope renewed today his call for adoration of Christ in the Eucharist when he greeted at the end of the general audience the religious sisters of the Order of Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, in Rome for the beatification of their founder.

Maria Maddalena dell'Incarnazione (born Caterina Sordini) was beatified Saturday in the Basilica of St. John Lateran. She was born in 1770 and died in 1824. Her order was recognized by the Holy See in 1818, and there are now communities of the sisters around the world.

In directing a special greeting to the women religious today -- as he did Sunday after praying the Regina Caeli -- the Pope said: "I encourage the increasing promotion of love for the Eucharist so that, alongside each of the order's convents, groups of 'adorers' spring up.

"In this way, the longing of your beloved founder will be fulfilled, [she] who loved to repeat, 'May Jesus be known, loved and adored by all, and be in every moment the receiver of thanksgiving in the most holy and most divine sacrament.'"

Fascinated

During the beatification ceremony, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins said Blessed Maria Maddalena invites Christians "to a maximum commitment to behave as believers always and everywhere […] so as to bring about in our interior and in the world, the Kingdom of God, which is the kingdom of peace, justice, sanctity and love."

The prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes said the Italian founder "firmly believed in Jesus' words" and is a woman who offers "a testimony of faith in the presence of the Son of God in the life of the Church, centered in the Eucharist."

"Fascinated by the Eucharistic mystery," he continued, "her mission -- received from the Lord himself -- was that of proposing […] to the whole Church the experience of an adoration that is 'perpetual.' Just as Jesus stays in the sacrament after the [Eucharistic] celebration too, it is necessary for us to stay with him, [in an] adoration that is prolonged through time."

According to the cardinal, the testimony of the new blessed is an impulse "to never lose the conviction about the fundamental and irreplaceable importance of prayer, and above all, the recognition of the Eucharist in its role as source and summit of our faith lives."