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legacy · ROME, 28 August 1986 AD

Pope John Paul II calls St. Augustine common father of Christian Europe

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Saint Augustine of Hippo
A large, intricately carved white marble shrine covered with sculpted figures and pinnacles, standing in the interior of a church.
The Arca di Sant'Agostino, the marble ark holding the relics of St. Augustine, commissioned in 1362 by Bonifacio Bottigella and carved by the Campionese masters, in the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, Pavia.

ROME, 28 August 1986 AD — Pope John Paul II gave the apostolic letter Augustinum Hipponensem at St Peter’s this week, on the feast of St. Augustine. It marks the sixteenth centenary of the conversion at Milan and of the baptism that followed at Easter, and is addressed to the whole Church.

The letter opens with the judgments of earlier Popes, back to Pope Celestine I, who called St. Augustine one of the best teachers of the Church in 431 AD, a year after his death.

Its second section states why: “Above all, the conversion helps us to penetrate more easily into his thought, which was so universal and profound that it rendered incomparable and imperishable service to Christian thought, so that we have good reason to call him the common father of Christian Europe.”

The conversion, Pope John Paul II writes, “has much to teach the men and women of today, who are so often mistaken about the greatest question of all life.”

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Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.

The Saints' words. This newspaper will never make a saint say something the historical record does not preserve.

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Image. Arca di Sant'Agostino (1362), Campionese masters; photograph by Carlo Dell'Orto, 4 January 2015, Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, Pavia — CC BY-SA 4.0 — see the original.

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About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a buon fresco on lime plaster, from the paper's reference image based on St Augustine's Vision of St Jerome (scene 16, east wall), from the Life of St Augustine (Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464-1465, apsidal chapel, Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano) View source artwork.

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About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a buon fresco on lime plaster, from the paper's reference portrait based on St Augustine's Vision of St Jerome (scene 16, east wall), from the Life of St Augustine (Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464-1465, apsidal chapel, Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano). View source artwork.

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