At a Vespers service, he announced the creation of a "Pontifical Council for the promotion of New Evangelisation" and called the loss of catholic faith "a grave crisis."
The 83-year-old pontiff admitted that while there were many areas of the world that were still ripe for missionaries, Europe and North America have suffered from an "eclipse of a sense of God" and needed to be re-evangelised.
There has been no announcement about who might lead the council but Italian media have suggested the Vatican will appoint Monsignor Rino Fisichella, a relative liberal compared to many of Benedict's key allies. Fisichella is head of the Pontifical Academy for Life and is the Vatican's most senior bioethics official.
Shouldn't he be a little more worried about cleaning up his own mess before bothering us again? Isn't the decline of catholicism and religious faith in general partly their fault?
