WORLD : Pope Urges Missionary Zeal
From Times Wire Services
VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II today announced an aggressive campaign to spread church teachings to new fronts, including post-Communist Eastern Europe and Asia, where Christians are a small minority.
To emphasize concern that missionary zeal is diminishing, the Pope laid out his strategy in an encyclical, one of the most authoritative forms a papal pronouncement can take. It was the eighth encyclical of his 12-year papacy.
“Missionary activity . . . appears to be waning,” the Pope wrote in the document, addressed to Roman Catholics worldwide.
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