CNS STORY: Vatican police apprehend man who tries to jump onto popemobile

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CNS Story:

POPE-AUDIENCE Jun-6-2007 (430 words) With photos. xxxi

Vatican police apprehend man who tries to jump onto popemobile

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Vatican police apprehended and escorted away a young man who tried to jump onto the open jeep in which Pope Benedict XVI was riding around St. Peter's Square before his June 6 audience talk.

Vatican officials would say only that the man was in his 20s and "showed signs of (mental) imbalance." Two hours later, he was still in the custody of the Vatican police, who were questioning him.

Pope Benedict did not appear to know what had happened and continued with his planned audience talk, which focused on St. Cyprian, a third-century bishop of Carthage in Africa, and especially on his teaching on prayer.

"I particularly love his book on the Our Father, which has helped me to understand and to pray the 'Our Father' better," the pope said.

"He teaches how, precisely in the Our Father, Christians have been given the correct way to pray," he said, starting from the recognition that a person does not pray just for himself or herself.

"Our prayer is public and communal," he said, quoting St. Cyprian, who emphasized the importance of the unity of the entire church.

He said St. Cyprian also underlined how precious it was for Christians to have and to recite a prayer that Jesus himself taught them.

Pope Benedict said the saint urged discipline, moderation, reserve and an economy of words in public prayer.

His teaching "is still valid today," the pope said, "and would help us celebrate the holy liturgy well."

In praying and, especially, in celebrating the liturgy, people must pay greater attention to the fact that "God listens not to the voice, but to the heart," Pope Benedict said.

In St. Cyprian's writing, the heart "is the privileged place of prayer," the pope said. "This is where there is that encounter with God, who speaks to the person and the person listens to God."

Quoting a later commentary, the pope said, "prayer is the work of the heart, not of the lips because God looks at the heart, not the words of the one praying."

Pope Benedict said he hoped everyone would learn how to develop a "listening heart," which "we really need. Only in that way can we experience fully that God is our father and that the church, the holy bride of Christ, is truly our mother."

- - -

Editors: The pope's English-language remarks at the audience can be found at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20070606_en.html.

The pope's Spanish-language remarks at the audience can be found at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20070606_sp.html.

END

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