{{Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday pronounced a blessing in Arabic at his weekly audience in front of 20,000 pilgrims on St Peter\u2019s Square \u2014 the first time the language has been used at such an event.}}<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pope prays for all Arabic speakers. May God bless you all!\u201d the pope said in Arabic at the audience, after a bishop read out an Arabic translation of the pope\u2019s comments praising the results of the Second Vatican Council.<\/p>\n
The landmark Council, which began 50 years ago this week, is a \u201ccompass\u201d for the Catholic Church \u201cin the middle of the storms\u201d, the pope said.<\/p>\n
As a young reformer, the then Joseph Ratzinger took part in the Council, better known as Vatican II, which revolutionised Catholic rituals.<\/p>\n
The Council brought together 2,250 bishops and lasted from 1962 until 1965.<\/p>\n
The pope has always defended the 15 \u201cconstitutions\u201d adopted by the Council despite complaints from traditionalists in the Church over several reforms.<\/p>\n
Benedict will celebrate mass on St Peter\u2019s Square on Thursday to launch a \u201cYear of Faith\u201d on the exact anniversary of the start of Vatican II.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday pronounced a blessing in Arabic at his weekly audience in front of 20,000 pilgrims on St Peter\u2019s Square \u2014 the first time the language has been used at such an event.}} \u201cThe pope prays for all Arabic speakers. May God bless you all!\u201d the pope said in Arabic at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-3462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=3462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}