Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Asking God to "teach us to see in the Church his beauty and his hope," to learn to love the Church, because in it, beyond the sins of man, the divine light is present. This is the place where "God speaks with us," where "we receive the forgiveness of God and learn to forgive." This is the exhortation that Benedict XVI addressed today to the 35,000 people present in St. Peter's Square for the general audience, during which, continuing with the illustration of the figures of the early Church, he talked about Germanus of Constantinople, who, although "he is not one of the most significant figures of Eastern Christianity," was nonetheless important during the controversy of iconoclasm, and for his thinking in the field of Mariology.
Born in 635, and elected patriarch of Constantinople in 715, in that year the capital of the Byzantine Empire underwent "an extremely dangerous siege" by the Saracens, during which Germanus led a procession with numerous icons to invoke the defense of the city.
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