Today, the Third Sunday of Lent, Pope Benedict made a visit to Santa Maria Liberatrice parish in the Testaccio area of 
Rome.
Teresa Benedetta has interesting background on the parish (run by the Salesians) here.
Many photos here.
No English translation of the homily yet, of course, but AsiaNews has a summary of the Angelus, which perhaps echoes the homily.
The pope was returning from a pastoral visit to the Roman parish of Santa Maria Liberatrice, in the neighbourhood of Testaccio, and was welcomed by tens of thousands of people waiting for him in Saint Peter’s Square.
The account says that Jesus, “tired from his journey”, asks for a drink from a Samaritan woman who had come to draw water from the well. The woman is astonished because “it was . . . absolutely unusual for a Jew to speak to Samaritan woman, and moreover an unfamiliar woman”. Jesus then speaks to her of “a ‘ living water’ capable of quenching her thirst and becoming within her a ’spring of water welling up to eternal life’”.
“All of this”, the pontiff explains, “begins from the real and tangible experience of thirst. The theme of thirst runs through the entire Gospel of John: from the encounter with the Samaritan woman to the great prophecy during the feast of Booths (John 7:37-38), to the Cross, when Jesus, before He dies, says in order to fulfil the Scriptures: ‘ I thirst’ (John 19:28). The thirst of Christ is a gate of entry to the mystery of God, who became thirsty in order to quench our thirst, just as He became poor in order to make us rich (cf. 2 Cor 8:9). Yes, God thirsts for our faith and our love. Like a good and merciful father, He desires for us all of the good possible, and this good is He Himself. The Samaritan woman, on the other hand, represents the existential dissatisfaction of those who have not found what they are looking for: she has had ‘ five husbands’ and now lives with another man; her coming and going to and from the well to draw water expresses a repetitive and resigned way of life. But everything changed for her on that day, thanks to her conversation with the Lord Jesus, who shook her up so much that she left her jar of water b
ehind and ran to tell the people of the village: ‘Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?’ (John 4:28-29)”.
The Vatican has translated the Pope’s recent Q & A with clergy – available in one piece here.
Teresa Benedetta pulls an interesting encounter from this morning’s event:
Giuliana Ferrara (pictured above) editor of Il Foglio, was among those greeted by the Holy Fatherat Santa Maria Liberatrice today. Ferrara is leading an anti-abortion ticket in
Italy’s coming parliamentary elections in April, and is one of Italy’s leading
‘devout atheists’ who share the moral and ethical principles of the Catholic Church.
