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Steve Fossett's Last Toy : Underwater Plane

It is among the most amazing winged craft the world has ever seen. Part-airplane, part-submarine. It will soon carry the Silicon Valley billionaire who was supposed to be its second customer to the bottom of the sea. Now the delicate questions remains: Who gets the first one?

By: Scott Eden
December 2007 , Page 2

Had Steve Fossett not gone missing over the Nevada desert this past September, by now he would likely have unveiled plans for his next, arguably most audacious, adventure. In a mission he had kept secret for nearly three years, Fossett intended to break the record for the deepest dive in history: 36,200 feet under the sea to the floor of the Mariana Trench, an enormous canyon in the middle of the North Pacific, the lowest known point on Earth. To take him there, he had commissioned the production of a highly irregular submersible aircraft — yes, aircraft, a machine inspired by and based heavily on the principles of aviation — designed by Graham Hawkes, a 59-year-old Englishman who is among the world’s best-known submarine engineers.


Rear Elevator: In this case, it works exactly like a plane’s.

I learned this in late October, just three weeks after Nevada authorities officially called off the search for Fossett, as I toured the Hawkes Ocean Technologies skunk works in Point Richmond, California, just across the bay from San Francisco. Inside one of the garages leased by Hawkes for his small design firm sat what looked like a cross between a bulbous experimental jet and a machine out of a Jules Verne fantasy. Fossett and Hawkes had christened the vessel Deep Flight Challenger, and though the name made an unfortunate allusion to the Shuttle disaster of 1986, it was actually a reference to the deepest point of the Mariana Trench — the Challenger Deep, itself named for a British navy ship, the HMS Challenger, whose crew discovered the trench in 1875. It was into those lightless, otherworldly fathoms Fossett intended to pilot the submersible.


Glass Nose: Provides far more visibility than tiny side portholes.

He and Hawkes had taken equal care in choosing the middle portion of the sub’s name. The result of nearly 30 years of Hawkes’s painstaking research and development, the craft — his brainchild and crowning achievement — is designed to use the principles of fluid dynamics to “fly” underwater. The submersible has wings, tail rudders, elevators and ailerons. It exploits thrust and drag; it has a push-propeller engine powered by an eight-kilowatt lithium-ion battery, and its cockpit holds one pilot, who lies prone on his stomach, like a man strapped into a pair of wings. The pilot peers through a large glass sphere at the nose of the vessel. With two joysticks, he can perform aileron rolls, rudder kicks and phugoid motions. The cockpit also features a heads-up display showing depth, speed, water temperature and bearing.


Twin Propellers: Powered by Lithium Ion Batteries “The prototype was kind of weak,” Graham Hawkes says. “Now we finally have a really good power source.”

By the time I saw it, the submersible’s components had been tested repeatedly; the ship was nearly ready for its first “dunk,” as Hawkes put it. Sometime around November it was scheduled to go into the water just outside his skunk works. There, in 10 feet of water, among gleaming white sailing yachts at dock, the Challenger was to “taxi” around just below the surface and receive a thorough debugging. “The initial dunks are the riskiest, like first flights in planes,” Hawkes says. “Normally on the experimental craft that I build, I’m the sole pilot, so there’s no risk to anybody else.” Then, a few weeks later, Hawkes planned to take it down to around 3,000 feet, in an area of Monterey Bay that has served as his preferred testing ground for the submersibles he has built since the mid-’80s. Further data gathering and debugging were to follow, after which Fossett would receive his craft. Four to six months later, from a catamaran mothership floating a few miles off the coast of Guam, Fossett was to ease the nose downward and plunge into the Challenger Deep.

Though Fossett merely wanted to be the first man to reach such depths, his ambition stood to revolutionize undersea exploration and, by extension, oceanography itself, a science of increasing prominence and importance. Mineral resources, climate change, strange biological wonders that show promise for medical and biochemical breakthroughs — the potential benefits from exploring the deepest ocean are only growing in number. It has been called the “real” last frontier — space notwithstanding — and Hawkes is a true believer. “I’ve always viewed it as an inevitable step in human progress,” he says.

The world record for the deepest dive was set in 1960, also in the waters of Challenger Deep, when Don Walsh, a navy lieutenant, and Jacques Piccard, the son of the inventor of the vessel used in the dive, descended to about 35,800 feet. Essentially a gondola hanging from a stabilization tank filled with gasoline, the entire contraption weighed a quarter of a million pounds. The goal of the dive was simply to see if Walsh and Piccard could get there and survive. The descent took almost five hours, and they stayed on the bottom for 20 minutes. At that extraordinary depth, they witnessed life. Small fish resembling miniature flounder swam around them. Since then, only an unmanned Japanese robot sub, in 1995, has gone as far down. Currently, Russia, France and Japan each have manned subs with depth ratings between 20,000 and 21,000 feet. The U.S. has plans for one that will go to 21,000, while China, determined to finish atop — or on bottom — of this competition, plans to launch a vessel it claims can reach nearly 23,000 feet.


The Wings: Note the shape is the same as a plane’s, just upside down.

But had Fossett put Hawkes’s Challenger in the water, it would have rendered all such geopolitical jockeying moot — and every government-funded submersible obsolete. With a pressure hull made of carbon fiber and its unique shape, the craft can, theoretically, withstand twice the external pressure of full-ocean depth (36,200 feet) — a force of 32,000 pounds per square inch. At around 8,000 pounds, Challenger is also extremely light. By comparison, Japan’s submersible, made of titanium, like most similar craft, weighs 26 tons. Because of their enormous mass, traditional undersea vehicles are costly as well — not only to build, but to operate and transport. They invariably require huge motherships with complicated block and tackle to lower them into the ocean. Challenger, by contrast, could be launched from a relatively small mothership — or even from your average megayacht. Indeed, it could be towed by a pickup truck (or fully loaded Range Rover) and dispatched off a boat ramp.

But the biggest difference between Challenger and any other deep-sea craft, recreational or government-built, is, of course, the embrace of flight. To explain this distinction, Hawkes makes an analogy: Conventional submersibles are like balloons. They use ballast to go up and down and have limited range and mobility. But since Hawkes’s ship resembles a fixed-wing aircraft, the small, lightweight Challenger can point its nose down, engage its engine and plunge to the bottom at 10 knots (nearly a third as fast as a nuclear submarine, which has nuclear reactors to help propel its dirigible-like hull through the water). By Hawkes’s calculations, Challenger would reach 36,200 feet in just 70 to 80 minutes. Challenger is what’s known as “positively buoyant.” When stationary, its nose peeks above the surface and into the air, but once it starts to move, the craft’s wings catch the rushing water, and it descends — a process analogous to the lift of an airplane’s takeoff. The physics of underwater flight, in fact, are the mirror image of aviation’s. Challenger’s airfoil, Hawkes explains, “is the typical wing section that any pilot would recognize. But it’s upside down. Air and water behave the same way, provided you account for viscosity and mass.” Take Bernoulli’s equation of fluid dynamics, throw in Reynolds’s Number to account for the difference between the two mediums, and voilà — this massive oversimplification aside — you’ve got underwater flight. The transfer between air and water, Hawkes says, is “perfectly literal.”

Hawkes’s own transfer between air and water occurred when he was in his early twenties, just out of college. Born on the southwest side of London, he had grown up fascinated by the pioneers of early flight: the adventurers, the aces, the dreamers and contrivers. “Where I really wanted to be was back 60 years, in the 1920s or teens — where an engineer in his backyard stringing canvas could build a plane and fly faster than anybody else,” he says. “But those days were gone. I bemoaned the loss, the passing of the days of real pioneering.” He applied to study aeronautics at the University of London but “messed up” on the entrance exams and instead enrolled at a three-year polytechnic school. After receiving his degree in mechanical engineering, he started a job at a British defense contractor, which assigned him to an “oddball project.” He was tasked with helping design a small submarine that would transport teams of elite amphibious soldiers (the British equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALs) secretly to shore. “To do that project, I asked for, and was given, a couple of months to look at the world of small submersibles, to judge the state of the art and make sure we didn’t reinvent the wheel,” he says.

What he found changed his life. Compared to aviation, the science of undersea transport was astonishingly primitive. “To give you some idea of the state of the art then, they were still building wooden skids on the bottoms of submersibles. Wood in the ocean absorbs water — it’s a ridiculous material to use. It was totally backward,” he says. “At that point, frankly, I wasn’t particularly in love with the ocean. But what I saw was an opportunity. There was an imagination gap.”

He left his position at the defense contractor and found a job at one of the few British companies that built submersibles, in this case a kind of elaborate atmospheric diving suit. He worked there for three years, during which he met, fell in love with and married Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer interested in using the suit. In 1979, she took it into 1,250 feet of water off the coast of Hawaii, becoming the first — and still the only — person to walk in an untethered suit that deep on the ocean floor. Earle would later become chief scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and explorer-in-residence at National Geographic. She is among the most renowned oceanographers in the world.


Pilot’s Belly Pad: Lying on one’s stomach is the most natural position underwater, Hawkes points out. “No snorkeler wants to sit in a chair. In fact, all animals go belly-down and head-first.”

After leaving the diving-suit company, Hawkes founded Osel Mantis, a sub-design firm based in Great Yarmouth, England, but soon joined Earle in San Francisco, where they started their own submersible company, Deep Ocean Engineering. Their idea was to develop sub-sea technologies for commercial customers (energy companies looking to prospect for oil and gas, for example). Hawkes designed and built hundreds of conventional subs, both manned and robotic, for relatively shallow waters. He took one of them into a movie-studio swimming pool and fought Roger Moore’s James Bond in For Your Eyes Only. In another, he descended alone in a globe of glass to 3,000 feet in Monterey Bay, setting a world record for solo-dive depth that stands today — the record Fossett would have shattered had he lived to go down in the Challenger. In the mid-’80s, Hawkes and Earle split (amicably; they remain friends and business partners). Around that time, he got the idea that would become the focus of the next quarter-century of his life. It dawned on him that much of the weight of a conventional sub came from the room taken up by the spherical shape of the internal pressure hull surrounding the diver.



A sphere, of course, is the optimum configuration for withstanding intense water pressure. But what if the hull could somehow be fitted around the human form? Hawkes was surprised by how much pressure capability he could retain by simply flattening out the sphere and making it elliptical — like a horizontal diving suit without arms or legs. The next problem, however, was comfort. The prone position is actually the most natural position for a deep dive, but such a snug configuration significantly limits one’s ability to go to the bathroom. Hawkes figured a diver would need to get down, do his work and get back up, in no more than perhaps four hours. To do this, the vessel would need to be capable of a vertical speed of at least seven miles per hour, about six times faster than any other traditional ballast submersible. As he thought about this problem, Hawkes’s mind naturally wandered back to his youth and the inspiration for his interested in sub technology in the first place, those old heroes of his, the pioneers of early flight. “We had to move an order of magnitude faster through the water than anything that had ever existed,” he says. “That meant you had to tear up everything you knew about submarines and throw it away. If you were familiar with drag, lift and the rest of it, you realized: We’ve got to go to the equivalent of a fixed wing.”

It took Hawkes almost 10 years to produce his first prototype. He called it Deep Flight I, and he launched it in Monterey Bay to much media fanfare — including an appearance on the cover of Time — in 1995. Long since decommissioned, the sub sits like a museum piece inside his Point Richmond skunk works. Compared to Challenger, Deep Flight I is primitive. It contains, Hawkes says, “vestigial” technology from traditional ballast subs. But as a proof of concept, Deep Flight I was an unmitigated success. He took it out that fall day and dived, climbed and barrel-rolled. He stood the craft up on its tail and down on its nose and shot it up out of the water in great porpoise-like leaps. “I wasn’t trying to be cute, but if you’re in that thing, it’s very obvious to do,” Hawkes says. “When you watch the video, it looks like somebody having too much fun.” After those theatrics, he realized it might not be a bad idea to build and market a version of his craft for recreational use.

He generated two business models from that initial test run: one for the scientific community and one for use in shallower water by wealthy aviators and underwater buffs. Hawkes decided to commercialize them both, nearly to the point of financial ruin. As successful as Deep Flight was, it was a niche product at best. He sunk his life savings — and those of his new wife, Karen Rubin, a former television broadcaster and publicity executive — whom he had married a few years before. In 1998, Hawkes started another business, having nothing to do with marine technology. He invented a weapons system — a remote-controlled gun platform — bought by the Pentagon and now being used in Iraq, and funneled the proceeds from that company into the development of his winged submersibles. In 2003, he finally created the prototype for his recreational craft.

A tandem-seater, it looks like a mechanical shark that has sprouted jet-fighter wings. To drum up interest, Hawkes and Karen conducted “flight schools” in the Bahamas and off Baja. Three months ago, they finally landed a customer. Hawkes will deliver his first production winged submersible, the Super Falcon, to Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins sometime this spring. Perkins will keep the $1 million-plus sub aboard his megayacht, the Maltese Falcon, and he’s excited to get his hands on it. He’s been a scuba diver all his life, but, he says, “With this, I’ll be able to explore a much wider area, go deeper and have more fun — in a sporty way — doing loops, rolls and porpoising. I’m hoping to use it in the Pacific when I go to Fiji next year. It’s a great place to dive.” Hawkes is currently assembling the Super Falcon for Perkins, just as he had been assembling the Challenger for Fossett.

Hawkes is a member of the Explorers Club, the celebrated New York–based institution whose ranks also included Charles Lindbergh, Neil Armstrong, Ernest Shackleton, Sir Edmund Hillary and Fossett. Fossett first became aware of Hawkes through the club and, about 10 years ago, approached the engineer with a proposal. He wanted to break the depth record, and he understood that Hawkes’s winged submersible would be the most efficient way to do so. Though excited by the prospect, Hawkes had entertained the notion of making that voyage himself, and for a while, Fossett’s proposal languished in dry-dock. But as the years passed and the nonrecreational version of Deep Flight remained on the drawing board, primarily due to lack of funding, Hawkes had a change of heart. Three years ago, the engineer and the adventurer came to an agreement: Fossett would underwrite the final stages of Challenger’s development, and in return, Hawkes would permit Fossett to go down into the trench alone.

No one, of course, could have foreseen that Fossett would vanish almost on the eve of Challenger’s unveiling. The entire Hawkes team participated in the search for him. As Karen manned communications and logistics in Port Richmond, Hawkes and his three engineers traveled into the Nevada desert with ground crews, spending a harrowing, frustrating and ultimately futile week out there.

The status of the Challenger project is now “in flux,” Hawkes says. For now, he has postponed its final assembly, and when he talks about it, his voice evinces disappointment and sadness — for the loss of his friend and, less so, for the uncertainty of the project’s future. “Steve provided the funds to take this to the next level,” he says. “Deep Flight I was a prototype for the concept of underwater flight, to show that it could work. But to take that same concept into the deep, there were no shortcuts. It couldn’t have been done on a shoestring, and it couldn’t have been done without Steve.”

None of this though, has shaken Hawkes’s belief in the value of sea-floor exploration, and he still intends to pursue the ultimate goal. “I really don’t think getting to the bottom of the ocean is optional for human culture,” he says. “I think Steve understood that. But if he can’t do it himself, at least he was an integral part of it happening,” Hawkes pauses. “Eventually.”

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2 COMMENTS

Posted by eMarv - Dec 3 2007 @ 2:56 PM
Re: Underwater Plane Do you know how much Hawkes need to make it happen?

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The past performance of any trading system or methodology is not necessarily indicative of future results. 12.03.2007 - Seventeenth Year - Num. 207 SUMMARY: DECEMBER 1 - 3 - Continue Theological Dialogue in Mutual Charity - Counter Relativism with Fundamental Truths - Rediscover the Beauty and Profundity of Christian Hope - Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for December - Sick People May Perceive the Merciful Love of God - Hope: a Gift That Changes Life - Korean Bishops: Understanding Dynamism of Christian Life - Audiences - Other Pontifical Acts ___________________________________________________________ CONTINUE THEOLOGICAL DIALOGUE IN MUTUAL CHARITY VATICAN CITY, DEC 1, 2007 (VIS) - As is traditional on November 30, Feast of St. Andrew, patron of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, a delegation from the Holy See, led by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, travelled to Istanbul, Turkey, for the liturgical celebrations marking that day. Every year, the ecumenical patriarchate sends a delegation to Rome on June 29, Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. Yesterday the Catholic delegation attended a solemn liturgy presided by His Holiness Bartholomew I, ecumenical patriarch, in the Church of St. George in Fanar, then met with the patriarch and with members of the synodal commission for relations with the Catholic Church. At the end of the ceremony, Cardinal Kasper presented the ecumenical patriarch with a signed copy of Benedict XVI's Encyclical "Spe salvi," a reproduction of a mosaic showing the "Mystical Lamb" from the vault of the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, and a Message from the Pope. In his Message, the Holy Father highlights his "vivid recollection" of his own "participation last year in the celebration of this feast at the Ecumenical Patriarchate." He also thanks God for the meeting of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox, which was held in Ravenna, Italy, in October, at the same time recognizing that the event "was not without its difficulties." His English-language Message continues: "I pray earnestly that these may soon be clarified and resolved, so that there may be full participation in the Eleventh Plenary Session and in subsequent initiatives aimed at continuing the theological dialogue in mutual charity and understanding. "Indeed," he adds, "our work towards unity is according to the will of Christ our Lord. In these early years of the third millennium, our efforts are all the more urgent because of the many challenges facing all Christians, to which we need to respond with a united voice and with conviction. "I therefore wish to assure you once more of the Catholic Church's commitment to nurture fraternal ecclesial relations and to persevere in our theological dialogue, in order to draw closer to full communion, as stated in our Common Declaration issued last year at the conclusion of my visit to Your Holiness." MESS/ST. ANDREW/KASPER:BARTHOLOMEW VIS 071203 (390) COUNTER RELATIVISM WITH FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS VATICAN CITY, DEC 1, 2007 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican, Benedict XVI received members of a Forum of Catholic-inspired Non Governmental Organizations, who are currently in Rome to reflect on the contribution they can offer, "in close collaboration with the Holy See, to the solution of the many problems and challenges associated with the various activities of the United Nations and other international and regional organizations." In his English-language talk, the Holy Father noted how, despite their different backgrounds, the delegates share "a passion for promoting human dignity. This same passion has constantly inspired the activity of the Holy See in the international community," he said. In this context, the Pope examined the question of international cooperation between governments, noting "with satisfaction ... achievements such as the universal recognition of the juridical and political primacy of human rights, ... the efforts being made to develop a just global economy and, more recently, the protection of the environment and the promotion of inter-cultural dialogue." "At the same time, international discussions often seem marked by a relativistic logic which would consider as the sole guarantee of peaceful coexistence between peoples a refusal to admit the truth about man and his dignity, to say nothing of the possibility of ethics based on recognition of the natural moral law. This has led, in effect, to the imposition of a notion of law and politics which ultimately makes consensus between states, ... the only real basis of international norms." Among "the bitter fruits of this relativistic logic," the Pope mentioned "the attempt to consider as human rights the consequences of certain self-centered lifestyles; a lack of concern for the economic and social needs of the poorer nations; contempt for humanitarian law, and a selective defense of human rights." The Holy Father expressed the hope that the Church's social doctrine may become "better known and accepted on the international level" and encouraged his listeners "to counter relativism creatively by presenting the great truths about man's innate dignity and the rights which are derived from that dignity." This, he said, "will help to advance specific initiatives marked by a spirit of solidarity and freedom. "What is needed," Pope Benedict added, "is a spirit of solidarity conducive for promoting as a body those ethical principles which, by their very nature and their role as the basis of social life, remain non-negotiable. A spirit of solidarity imbued with a strong sense of fraternal love leads to a better appreciation of the initiatives of others and a deeper desire to cooperate with them." "An authentic spirit of freedom, lived in solidarity, will help the initiative of the members of non-governmental organization to create a broad gamut of new approaches and solutions with regard to those temporal affairs which God has left to the free and responsible judgement of every individual. When experienced in solidarity, legitimate pluralism and diversity will lead not to division and competition, but to ever greater effectiveness." AC/CATHOLIC NGOS/... VIS 071203 (500) REDISCOVER THE BEAUTY AND PROFUNDITY OF CHRISTIAN HOPE VATICAN CITY, DEC 1, 2007 (VIS) - In the Vatican Basilica at 5 p.m. today, the Pope presided at the celebration of the first Vespers of the first Sunday of Advent. At the start of his homily, the Holy Father recalled how "Advent is the time of hope par excellence" and how Christians, "as they prepare to celebrate the great feast of the birth of Christ the Savior, revitalize their expectation of His glorious return at the end of time." "It was to the subject of hope," he said," that I dedicated my second Encyclical, which was published yesterday. And today I am happy to present it ideally to the entire Church on this first Sunday of Advent so that, while preparing for Christmas, the community and the individual faithful may read and meditate upon it, and so rediscover the beauty and profundity of Christian hope." After underlining how "true and certain hope is founded on faith in God-Love, the merciful Father," Benedict XVI made it clear that Advent is a "propitious time for the rediscovery of hope, a hope that is not vague and illusory but sure and trustworthy because 'anchored' in Christ, God-made-man and rock of our salvation." In his Letter to them, St. Paul reminds the Ephesians "that before embracing faith in Christ they had no hope and were 'without God in the world'," said the Pope. "This expression seems more valid than ever," he added, "because of the paganism of our own day. In particular we may refer it to contemporary nihilism which corrodes hope in man's heart, causing him to think that emptiness reigns within him and around him: emptiness before birth, emptiness after death. The truth is that without God, hope fades." "What is at stake," he said, "is the relationship between existence in the here and now, and what we call the 'beyond:' this is not a place in which we will 'end up' after death, but rather the reality of God, the fullness of life to which each human being is, so to say, reaching out. To this expectation of mankind God responded in Christ with the gift of hope. "Man," the Pope added, "is the only creature who is free to say yes or no to eternity, in other words to God. Human beings can extinguish hope in themselves, eliminating God from their lives. ... God knows man's heart. He knows that those who refuse Him have not known His true face, and for this reason He never ceases to knock at our door like a humble pilgrim seeking welcome. This is why the Lord grants new time to humanity: so that everyone may come to know Him! And this too is the significance of a new liturgical year that begins: it is a gift of God Who wishes once more to reveal Himself in the mystery of Christ, through the Word and the Sacraments." Benedict XVI highlighted how "God loves us and for this reason expects us to return to Him, to open our hearts to His love, to put our hand in His and remember that we are His children. This expectation of God's always precedes our own hope, just as His love always reaches us first." "All human beings are called to hope, thus responding to God's expectation in them," the Pope concluded. "Hope is indelibly written in man's heart because God our Father is life, and we were made for eternal and blessed life." HML/VESPERS:ADVENT/... VIS 071203 (590) BENEDICT XVI'S PRAYER INTENTIONS FOR DECEMBER VATICAN CITY, DEC 1, 2007 (VIS) - Benedict XVI's general prayer intention for December is: "That human society may be solicitous in the care of all those stricken with AIDS, especially children and women, and that the Church may make them feel the Lord's love." His mission intention is: "That the incarnation of the Son of God, which the Church celebrates solemnly at Christmas, may help the peoples of the Asiatic Continent to recognize God's Envoy, the only Savior of the world, in Jesus." BXVI-PRAYER INTENTIONS/DECEMBER/... VIS 071203 (100) SICK PEOPLE MAY PERCEIVE THE MERCIFUL LOVE OF GOD VATICAN CITY, DEC 2, 2007 (VIS) - Early this morning, Benedict XVI visited the Roman hospital of St. John the Baptist, which belongs to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and specializes in treating people suffering from neurological disorders. The Holy Father celebrated Mass then went on to visit the reanimation unit, an advanced structure for the cure and rehabilitation of patients recovering from comas. In his homily, delivered before patients and their families gathered in a hall of the hospital, the Pope gave assurances of his spiritual closeness and his daily prayers, inviting them to "find support and comfort in Jesus, and never to lose trust." "God visits us mysteriously in suffering and sickness," said the Holy Father, "and if we abandon ourselves to His will, we may experience the power of His love. Hospitals and nursing homes, precisely because they are inhabited by people tried by pain, can become privileged places in which to bear witness to the Christian love that nourishes hope and gives rise to fraternal solidarity." Benedict XVI then recalled how, at its origins, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta - of which Fra' Andrew Bertie is the current grand master - was dedicated to helping pilgrims in the Holy Land by means of a Hospice-Infirmary, and how "it sought to cure the sick, especially the poor and marginalized. One testimony of such fraternal love," he added, "is this hospital which, having been built in the 1970s, is today a center of high technology and of solidarity where, alongside the healthcare staff, many volunteers work with generous dedication." The Holy Father told the doctors, nurses and volunteers who work in the hospital that they "are called to provide an important service to the sick and to society, a service that calls for abnegation and a spirit of sacrifice. "In each sick person," he added, "may you know how to recognize and serve Christ Himself. Show Him, with your gestures and your words, the signs of His merciful love." The Pope also took advantage of his visit to the hospital "ideally" to present his Encyclical "Spe salvi" to the Christian community of Rome. And he invited his listeners to study the text "so as to discover the reasons for that 'trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present, ... even if it is arduous'." BXVI-VISIT/.../ORDER OF MALTA HOSPITAL VIS 071203 (410) HOPE: A GIFT THAT CHANGES LIFE VATICAN CITY, DEC 2, 2007 (VIS) - At midday today, the first Sunday of Advent, Benedict XVI appeared at the window of his study overlooking St. Peter's Square to pray the Angelus with the thousands of pilgrims gathered there. The Holy Father began his remarks by recalling how during this liturgical time "the People of God resume their journey to experience the mystery of Christ in history. Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever; history however changes and needs to be constantly evangelized." "This Sunday," he said, "is then an appropriate day to offer the entire Church and all men and women of good will my second Encyclical, which I have chosen to dedicate to the subject of Christian hope. It is entitled 'Spe salvi' because it begins with St. Paul's expression 'Spe salvi facti sumus (in hope we are saved). Here, as in other passages of the new Testament, the word 'hope' is closely linked to the word 'faith.' It is a gift that changes the life of the person who receives it." "In what does this hope consist, this hope so great and so 'trustworthy' as to make us say that in it we have 'salvation?' It substantially consists in the knowledge of God, in the discovery of His good and merciful Father's heart. With His death on the cross and His resurrection, Jesus revealed His face to us, the face of a God so great in love as to transmit to us an unshakeable hope which not even death can break." However, "the development of modern science has confined hope and faith ever more to the private and individual sphere, to the point that today it is clear, and at times dramatically clear, that mankind and the world have need of God, ... otherwise they remain without hope. "Without doubt science contributes to the good of humanity, but it is not capable of redeeming it," the Pope added in conclusion. "Man is redeemed by love which makes personal and social life good and beautiful. For this reason the great hope, the full and definitive hope, is guaranteed by God, by the God Who is love, and Who in Jesus visited us and gave us life." ANG/HOPE/... VIS 071203 (380) KOREAN BISHOPS: UNDERSTANDING DYNAMISM OF CHRISTIAN LIFE VATICAN CITY, DEC 3, 2007 (VIS) - Benedict XVI today received prelates from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea and the apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaator, Mongolia, who have just completed their "ad limina" visit. Their coming to Rome, the Pope observed in his talk, has helped to strengthen "the bonds of collegiality which express the Church's unity in diversity and safeguard the tradition handed down by the Apostles." Continuing his English-language address to the prelates, the Holy Father spoke positively of the growth of the Church in Asia, recalling how the testimony of Korean martyrs and of many others on the continent "speaks eloquently of the fundamental concept of 'communio' that unifies and vivifies ecclesial life in all its dimensions." "To remain in Christ's love also has a particular significance for you today," the Pope told the Korean bishops, who in their reports had highlighted the negative effects of a secularist mentality. And he encouraged them to "to be effective shepherds of hope," striving "to ensure that the bond of communion which unites Christ to all the baptized is safeguarded and experienced as the heart of the mystery of the Church." "The gateway to this mystery of communion with God is of course Baptism. This sacrament of initiation - far more than a social ritual or welcome into a particular community - is the initiative of God. Those reborn through the waters of new life enter the door of the universal Church and are drawn into the dynamism of the life of faith." "The word 'communio' also refers of course to the Eucharistic center of the Church. ... The Eucharist roots our understanding of the Church in the intimate encounter between Jesus and humanity and reveals the source of ecclesial unity: Christ's act of giving Himself to us makes us His body." Benedict XVI told the bishops that "programs designed to highlight the importance of Sunday Mass should be infused with a sound and stimulating catechesis on the Eucharist. This will foster a renewed understanding of the authentic dynamism of Christian life among your faithful." He continued his address to the prelates: "I encourage you to ensure that religious are welcomed and supported in their efforts to contribute to the common task of spreading God's Kingdom." By sharing the "living treasures" of their spirituality with the laity, religious "will help to dispel the notion that communion means mere uniformity." The Pope then went on to consider "the importance of the promotion of marriage and family life in your region," recalling how, in this "vital apostolate, ... the growing complexity of matters regarding the family ... raises the question of providing appropriate training for those committed to working in this area." "I am also aware of the practical gestures of reconciliation undertaken for the wellbeing of those in North Korea. I encourage these initiatives and invoke Almighty God's providential care upon all North Koreans," the Holy Father concluded. "Throughout the ages, Asia has given the Church and the world a host of heroes of the faith. ... May they stand as perennial witnesses to the truth and love which all Christians are called to proclaim." AL/.../KOREA VIS 071203 (540) AUDIENCES VATICAN CITY, DEC 3, 2007 (VIS) - The Holy Father today received in separate audiences: - Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. - Two prelates from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea, on their "ad limina" visit: - Bishop Peter Lee Ki-heon, military ordinary. - Fr. Simon Peter Ri Hyong-u O.S.B., apostolic administrator "ad nutum Sanctae Sedis" of the territorial abbey of Tokwon. - Bishop Wenceslao Padilla C.I.C.M., apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on his "ad limina" visit. On Saturday, December 1, he received in separate audiences five prelates from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea, on their "ad limina" visit: - Bishop John Chrysostom Kwon Hyeok-ju of Andong. - Bishop Gabriel Chang Bong-hun of Cheongju. - Bishop Francis Xavier Ahn Myong-ok of Masan, accompanied by Bishop emeritus Michael Pak Jeong-il. - Bishop Paul Hwang Cheol-soo of Pusan. AL/.../... VIS 071203 (150) OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS VATICAN CITY, DEC 3, 2007 (VIS) - The Holy Father: - Appointed Fr. Isaac Jogues Agbemenya, diocesan administrator of Aneho, Togo, as bishop of the same diocese (area 2,712, population 824,170, Catholics 182,265, priests 64, religious 48). The bishop-elect was born in Kpeme, Togo in 1958 and ordained a priest in 1985. - Appointed Msgr. Michael Akasius Toppo of the clergy of the diocese of Tezpur, India, bursar and diocesan chancellor, as bishop of the same diocese (area 38,700, population 4,382,000, Catholics 110,000, priests 77, religious 213). The bishop-elect was born in Gormara, India in 1955 and ordained a priest in 1986. He succeeds Bishop Robert Kerketta S.D.B., whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit. On Saturday, December 1, it was made public that he appointed Msgr. Ermes Giovanni Viale, official in the Section for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, as bureau chief at the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. NER:RE:NA/.../... VIS 071203 (170) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summary | VIS | News Services | Cancel | Contact Us | Privacy Holy Father'sActivities Holy Father's Documents Catechism Bible & more Roman Curia Vatican City Philatelic & Numismatic Office Vatican Museums Publishing House Acreditations Pictures L'Osservatore You can find more information at: www.vatican.va - www.vis.pcn.net VIS sends its news service only to those who have requested it. Please do not reply to this e-mail.For address changes, cancellations use the links or visit our web. The news items contained in the Vatican Information Service may be used, in part or in their entirety, by quoting the source: V.I.S. -Vatican Information Service. Copyright © Vatican Information Service 00120 Vatican City

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