c. 1998 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Since he began his reign two decades ago, Pope John Paul II has been preparing in earnest for the third millennium.

With hopes of greeting it in Jerusalem, the aging pontiff four years ago initiated a churchwide project encouraging Catholics to precede the historic moment with prayer, repentance, reflection and outreach. His call is being heard _ from Milan to Milwaukee, Bologna to Boston _ as cardinals,bishops and lay believers examine what it means to be a church facing its 2000th anniversary.

The preparations have also included one of the pope’s pet themes _ the role of the media in contemporary culture.

Religious leaders and journalists examined the millennium’s impact on their professions at a special meeting, Religion and Media 2000, at the Vatican late last month in a session bringing together cardinals, rabbis, and clergy with editors, publishers and reporters.”Times of great change such as ours can be disorienting: and this can bring with it a blurring of moral vision,”the pope said in a special written message to the conference.”Developments can be so rapid and dramatic that we lose sight of basic truths and values.”In this context, the role of media is pervasive and powerful,”he said, adding such power must be wielded within an ethical framework.”It is here that religion can contribute, providing the ethical framework within which such media can be genuinely creative and helpful to human development.” John Paul has been preparing the church’s observance of the millennium for nearly a decade.

In a 1994 letter to the church’s 1 billion faithful, the pontiff said the 2000th anniversary of Jesus Christ’s birth commemorates the temporal world becoming”an ordered universe”because God became human.”In Christ, religion is no longer a `blind search for God,'”the pope said,”but the response of faith to God who reveals himself.” The jubilee, as the commemoration is known, will run from Christmas Eve 1999 to Epiphany on Jan. 6, 2001, will include the opening of a special door at St. Peter’s Basilica. In local dioceses the jubilee will be observed through prayers and religious celebrations, including ecumenical and interfaith observances.

At the Vatican media conference, church leaders said interreligious dialogue is among the great challenges for Christians.

Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria said such dialogue is demanded by”the deep respect for all that is good, true, beautiful and holy.”

Arinze, president of the Vatican’s Council for Interreligous Dialogue, announced a four-day worldwide meeting of religious leaders scheduled to take place in October 1999, allowing religious leaders to reflect on how to bring needed change to the world.

“As we get set to step into the third millennium, the followers of the various religions have no choice but to come closer to one another, to try to listen to one another, to try to understand one another better and to strive to collaborate more for a better world,” Arinze said.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

As the millennium nears, Catholicism today is a diverse, energetic and fractious army of multiple nations, races and cultures. Its members range from religious mystics devoted to the Virgin Mary to social organizers seeking better housing for the poor.

For this church and other Christians, the four key words”are apocalyptic, prophetic, Christian and local,”Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan said in a recent lecture at Harvard Divinity School.

Like Arinze, Martini has been mentioned as a candidate to be the next pope. At Harvard, Martini underscored how Catholics see the approaching millennium as a time for hope, not anxiety.”Are these days, our days, the final days of history?”he said.”We can answer yes, that after the coming of Jesus, these are the final days of history. But for the very same reason we must deny that there is any significance to the simple changing of the year 1999 into the year 2000.” The world must”move away from gloomy predictions to a prophetic vision of what is at stake in this changing of millennia,”Martini said. While Christians should celebrate, they must also repent past errors, offer meaning to spiritual seekers and find ways to bring needed change.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

John Paul, 78, the most traveled pontiff in history, wants to be in Jerusalem to mark the year 2000. In spite of his advanced age and frail health, he sees the trip as a very special pilgrimage and it has fueled widespread speculation in Vatican circles he may invite Jew and Muslims to join him in interfaith prayer in the holy city.”He made it very clear in the beginning that the jubilee celebration should not just be for Christians,”said Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.”But that it should be for believers _ whether it was Jewish believers, Islamic believers.”He wants us to make a great act of reconciliation, of repentance for what we have done individually. And reconciliation for what the church has done as a church that has caused bitterness or any type of division, which keeps people from being united as the family of God,”Fiorenza said.

In Rome, the Vatican’s preoccupation with John Paul II’s vision for the next millennium is obvious. Everywhere there is renovation, even some new construction.

At the papal palace, a Russian mosaicist has been working for two years on a place to be known as the Redemptoris Chapel. More than 100 million mosaic pieces are expected to adorn it by the time it opens in the year 2000. Dedicated to Mary, the chapel reflects this pope’s goal of bridging the division between Western Christianity and its Orthodox counterpart that has plagued the church for nearly half its life.

That divide, John Paul said in his 1994 letter, has”been detrimental to the unity”of Christianity.”In these last years of the millennium, the church should invoke the Holy Spirit with ever greater insistence, imploring from him the grace of Christian unity.” DEA END HOLMES