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                               1  Pastoral Letter - 1889

                         THE PEACE BE WITH YOU ALL


                               GIUSEPPE MARELLO
                                   Bishop of Acqui
             To our Venerable Brothers and Beloved Children on Christ
                         Dignitaries, Canons, Pastors, Clergy,
              Excellent Magistrates and People of the City and Diocese
                     PEACE AND GREETINGS IN THE LORD

            Pax Vobis.
                 May  peace  be  with  you,  Venerable  Brothers  and  beloved
            Children.  The first word I address to you is a greeting of peace
            and  best  wishes;  greeting  and  wishes  that  include  not  only
            peace, that good to which our heart naturally tends, but a good
            incomparably better and all supernatural, the true peace which,
            in Christ's coming on earth, was announced by the choirs of an-
            gels to men of good will.  In this life it is a reflection of that
            ineffable state of happiness and love which is called glory in the
            next  life,  and  since  it  descends  from  heaven,  it  renders  earth
            similar to heaven, as much as it can.
                 The Church has been made guardian and dispenser of this
            treasure of good by her Divine Founder, since through her we
            learn this truth, and we receive those graces in which the mind
            and heart find their rest. I am a minister, although an unworthy
            one, of the Church and I am sent to you by Her visible Head, to
            give you this greeting of peace which I renew every day at the
            holy  altar,  thus  beginning  the  mission  of  communicating  this
            peace to  your souls.  Therefore it is a mission of peace that  I
            come to carry out among you; the same mission that the worthy
            Pastor  that  you  loved  so  much  fulfilled  for  a  good  seventeen
            years; and that of the many persons, notable for their knowledge

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