More than 900 priests close meeting with trip to Malta's Gozo island

Published: 2004-10-26

XEWKIJA, Malta (CNS) -- More than 900 priests and bishops from around the world traveled to the Maltese island of Gozo to close a five-day meeting on holiness. Xewkija residents cheered the arrival of busloads of priests who prayed morning lauds with Berlin Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky in St. John the Baptist Church, known locally as the Rotunda Church. Afterward, the priests wandered through a maze of narrow streets to the Cathedral of the Assumption and St. George Basilica. The elaborate Romanesque structures offered shelter from the Mediterranean sun as well as a place to pray. The day in Gozo Oct. 22 concluded a five-day meeting packed with lectures, meditations, Masses and penitential rites in and around Valetta, Malta. Personal and priestly sanctity were emphasized, with St. Paul often offered as the model of evangelization. Priests could choose from talks on eucharistic, Marian, Christocentric or pneumatological-Pauline models of holiness.

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