Contact Information
Evangelization
& Catechesis Office
523 N. Duluth Ave.
Sioux Falls, SD 57104
605.988.3763
Dr. Chris Burgwald
605.988.3770
Email
Gail Nelson
605.988.3763
Email
|
 |
The Wednesday Audience is a papal tradition that stretches back to the 19th century.
Initially popes used it as a means to meet with pilgrims who came to visit them at the
Vatican and to offer an occasional teaching, but John Paul II transformed these events
into ongoing catechetical addresses, in which he would take dozens or even hundreds of
Wednesday audiences to teach on a particular doctrine of the Church. The well-known Theology
of the Body, for instance, is from Wednesday audiences over the course of four years in the
early 1980's. Pope Benedict XVI has taken up the same tradition in his pontificate. He began
by finishing the series of addresses on the Psalms and Canticles that John Paul was giving
before he died, typically taking the text that John Paul had written and making some personal
changes. After that, however, Benedict began offering Wednesday audience catechetical addresses
which are truly his own, in the sense that they are his own writings. He began with a series on
the Church and the Apostles, which have since been compiled and published both by Our Sunday
Visitor and Ignatius Press (contact the Evangelization & Catechesis office at the links to the
lower left for more information on these books). He has since moved on to the Fathers of the Church,
those theologians who wrote in the first centuries of Christianity.
You can find all of these addresses at the
Vatican website,
but for your convenience they will also be linked here in the near future.
|
|
|
 |