This year our ordination class of 1962 celebrated our 42nd anniversary. Over these four decades I never had the opportunity to take a sabbatical of any kind, and after consultation with the Holy See, I have been granted permission to take the month of October over the next several years as special sabbatical months. This year, I depart on October 6 and return on October 29.

The purpose of each October's sabbatical will be to visit parts of the world where newer, younger Catholic Churches are taking root and beginning to flourish. This year my sabbatical will consist of two portions: visiting young Churches in central Africa, and a final week of art and architecture in Florence and Siena, Italy.

I am very excited about this sabbatical opportunity, and look forward to this time of special enrichment in the life of the Church --- especially in areas of new growth for the Church. All of our priests who have taken sabbaticals over the years have returned with a renewed sense of commitment to Jesus Christ and to the work of evangelization. I look forward to the same experience.

Since Los Angeles has countless thousands of people from so many continents and countries, each year's sabbatical will enable me to know and understand the local culture and religious practices of our immigrant peoples.

This year's sabbatical month will take me to the following locations:

---October 6-7: travel to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, via Brussels.

---October 8-11: public Masses, visits to parishes, the Church street children project, health projects, HIV/AIDS projects, meetings with Congolese Bishops, the U.S. Ambassador, and United Nations representatives.

---October 12-15: visit the Tshumbe Diocese in eastern Congo, visits to rural parishes, rural Catholic schools, rural health clinics, public Masses.

---October 16-17: visits in Kigali, Rwanda to parishes, genocide victims, parish orphanages, public Masses.

---October 18-20: visit to Muyinga and Bujumbura, Burundi, visiting parishes, HIV/AIDS projects, Masses.

---October 20 night: fly to Brussels, then to Florence, Italy.

---October 21-24: art and architecture visits in and around Florence.

---October 25-28: art and architecture visits in and around Siena.

---October 29: return to Los Angeles

May I ask your prayers for the spiritual and pastoral graces of these visits to Central Africa, and that the Lord will continue to bring forth a great harvest of energetic Catholics in these lands.

---Cardinal Roger Mahony