RITE OF POSSESSION OF THE CHAIR
OF THE BISHOP OF ROME

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II

Basilica of St John Lateran
Sunday, 12 November 1978

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

1. The day has come on which Pope John Paul II arrives in the Basilica of St John Lateran to take possession of his Chair as Bishop of Rome. I wish to kneel down in this place and kiss the threshold of this temple, which has been for so many centuries "the dwelling of God with men" (Rev 21:3): God the Saviour with the People of the Eternal City, Rome. With all those present here I repeat the words of the psalm: "I was glad when they said to me, / 'Let us go to the house of the Lord!' / Our feet have been standing / within your gates, O Jerusalem! / Jerusalem, built as a city / which is bound firmly together, / in which the tribes go up, / the tribes of the Lord, / as was decreed for Israel, / to give thanks to the name of the Lord" (Ps 122/121).

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II
FOR THE INAUGURATION OF HIS PONTIFICATE

St. Peter's Square
Sunday, 22 October 1978

1. "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt 16:16). These words were spoken by Simon, son of Jonah, in the district of Caesarea Philippi. Yes, he spoke them with his own tongue, with a deeply lived and experienced conviction—but it is not in him that they find their source, their origin: "...because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven" (Mt 16:17). They were the words of Faith.