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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 336

336 PAPAL LETTERS AND MESSAGES APPENDIX 1
Bl. John Paul II to the Legion of Mary

Address delivered by the
Holy Father, Bl. John Paul II, to a group of
Italian legionaries on 30th October 1982

1. My welcome is addressed to each and every one of you. It is reason
for joy for me to see you in this hall in such great numbers from
various regions of Italy, more so in that you are only a small part
of that apostolic movement, that in the span of sixty years has
rapidly spread in the world and today, two years from the death of
its founder, Frank Duff, is present in so many dioceses in the
universal Church.
My predecessors, beginning with Pius XI, have addressed words
of appreciation to the Legion of Mary, and I myself on 10 May
1979, when receiving one of your first delegations, recalled with
great pleasure the occasions I had previously had to come in
contact with the Legion, in Paris, Belgium and Poland, and then,
as Bishop of Rome, in the course of my pastoral visits to the
parishes of the city.
Today, therefore, as I receive in audience the Italian pilgrim age
of your movement, I would like to emphasise those aspects which
constitute the substance of your spirituality and your modus
essendi within the Church.

Vocation to be a leaven
2. You are a movement of lay people who propose to make faith the
aspiration of your life up to the achievement of personal sanctity.
It is without doubt a lofty and difficult ideal. But today the
Church, through the Council, calls all Christians of the Catholic
laity to this ideal, inviting them to share in the kingly priesthood
of Christ with the witness of a holy life, with mortification and
charitable works; to be in the world, with the splendour of faith,
hope and charity, what the soul is in the body (LG 10, 38).
Your proper vocation as lay people, that is the vocation to be a
leaven in the People of God, a Christian inspiration in the modern
world, and to bring the priest to the people, is eminently ecclesial.
The same Second Vatican Council exhorts all the laity to accept
with ready generosity the call to be united ever more intimately to
the Lord and, considering as one’s own everything that is his, to
share in the same salvific mission of the Church, to be its living
instruments, above all where, because of particular conditions of
modern society – a constant increase in population, a reduction in
the numbers of priests, the appear ance of new problems, the
autonomy of many sectors of human life – it could be more

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