Pope Benedict XVI’s Nearly Unnoticed Letter on St. John Chrysostom

With thanks to Fr Z , who writes:

On 8 November, the Holy See released a letter of Pope Benedict for the 1600th anniversary of the death of St. John Chrysostom, a doctor of the Church of great importance to both the West and the Eastern Churches.

The occasion of the letter was a conference being held at the Patristic Institute (and my school) the "Augustinianum".

This is a "Letter", not a "Message" or a "Discourse". It is not an "Apostolic Letter".

It is not too long, but it is one of the best written Letters I have seen for a while.

There was a CNS story on this letter, which so far has been placed on the Vatican web site only in Italian. Also, for reasons I cannot fathom, the Vatican website does not list it in Latest Updates....

So, as a service to you, WDTPRS provides the Letter in English translation, which you can download in Word format. Here below I will briefly explain the structure of the letter so that when you read it, you can see what Pope Benedict is really trying to say.

Continued here