Pope Benedict XVI appointed Cardinal Franc Rodé, prefect emeritus of
the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of
Apostolic Life, as his special envoy to the closing celebration of the
550th anniversary of the Archdiocese of Ljubljana, the capital of
Slovenia. The southeastern European nation gained its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
In his letter naming Cardinal Rodé his special envoy, Pope Benedict paid tribute to the “rich history of the flock of Ljubljana” and noted the importance of the new evangelization.
The establishment of the archdiocese, Cardinal Rodé said at the December 9 solemn Mass, was a crucial moment in the establishment of Slovenian national consciousness.
After recalling the difficult years of Nazism and Communism, Cardinal Rodé, who served as Archbishop of Ljubljana from 1997 to 2004, preached about the challenges of relativism and secularism, the need to protect human life from conception to natural death, and the importance of the defense of marriage and the family.
79% of Slovenia’s 2.0 million people are Catholic, according to Vatican statistics.