WITH JOY I meet you today, sons of Saint Benedict from Saint Madeleine Abbey in Barroux who desired to show your fidelity to the Lord and your attachment to His Church by our common pilgrimage.

I give thanks with you to divine Providence which has helped you, since the tragic events of June 1988, to return to communion with the Apostolic See. Since that time your attachment to Peter's successor has been constantly strengthened, and I am happy to know that your relations with the diocesan Church are becoming more loyal and fraternal every day.
You have also been a great encouragement and constant support for the Benedictine nuns of the Annunciation, who are in the process of building their monastery not far from yours, and you have contributed in a fortuitous and effective way towards strengthening their bonds with the diocese.

The Holy See has granted your monastery the faculty of utilizing liturgical books in use in 1962 in order to respond to the aspirations of those "who feel attached to some previous liturgical and disciplinary forms of the Latin tradition,"I thus confirming the dispositions of the conciliar Constitution on the Sacred liturgy which recalls that "even in the liturgy the Church does not wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not involve the faith or the good of the whole community. Rather she respects and fosters the qualities and talents of the various races and nations."2 It is quite evident that, far from trying to put the brakes on the application of the reform undertaken after the Council, this concession is meant to facilitate the ecclesial union of the persons who feel attached to these liturgical forms.

I express my wish that the "work of God" and particularly the Eucharist celebrated in this way in your monastery will effectively contribute to the fulfillment of the monastic ideal which will surely be nourished by silence which enhances contemplation and the zealous search for God above all things, so that your young and fervent community will be able to bear witness to invisible realities in the contemporary world. Thus, with the other Benedictine monasteries, you will continue to be places of retreat for the spiritual renewal where, with the first place rightly reserved for God, "the human is directed toward and subordinated to the divine, the visible to the invisible, action to contemplation, and this present world to that city yet to come."

I take the occasion of this meeting to address all those who are still part of the Saint Pius X Fraternity. I urgently invite them to place themselves again under the direction of Peter's successor and to make contact with the "Ecciesia Dei" Commission which was established to facilitate their reincorporation into full Church communion. Sainte-Madeleine Abbey should be an encouragement for them to rediscover the productive unity of the Church gathered around the Bishop of Rome. I entrust the great intention of the reconciliation of all the Church's sons and daughters in one communion to your prayers.
To help you in your monastic life in the heart of the Church, our Mother, I gladly bless you.