Speeches 1980 - Thursday, 11 December 1980
1. I am happy to have this occasion to meet with you as you complete your course of continuing theological education at Casa Santa Maria, and as you prepare to return home. We know that, during these moments we spend together, Jesus Christ is in our midst because we are gathered in his holy name and in the fraternity of his priesthood.
By God’s grace and with the encouragement of your Bishops and religious superiors, you have had the wonderful opportunity for a prolonged reflection on theology and on Sacred Scripture. At the same time I am sure that you have known the other advantages which the Second Vatican Council sees as linked with courses such as yours: a strengthening of the spiritual life and a beneficial exchange of apostolic experiences[1].
2. And now you are going back to your people, to all those communities in which you exercise your pastoral ministry. You are going back, please God, to proclaim with ever greater understanding and zeal the Good News of salvation, which was revealed by a merciful and loving Father, and which the Church, in fidelity to Christ, communicates from one generation to the next.
The proclamation of the Gospel is your primary task as co-workers with your Bishops, and it reaches its fulfilment in the Eucharistic Sacrifice[2]. It is the mission to which you were called; it is the reason for which you were ordained.
3. But to be totally effective as priests, your whole lives must be dedicated to the word of God and to him who is the Incarnate Word of the Father, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, our one High Priest.
The word of God is the criterion for all our preaching. The power inherent in the word of God is what we offer to our people, and it is this power that unites the faithful and builds them up in holiness and justice. The word of God is a challenge to the People of God - and to the heart of each one of us - but is brings with it strength, immense strength; and when embraced, it produces joy and gladness. The word of God which we are called to proclaim and on which every community of faith is built is the message of the Cross. As we gather day after day, week after week to celebrate this mystery of faith, let us endeavour to present and explain its various aspects, which are so vital for the life of the Church: the healing and forgiveness, the suffering and deliverance, the victory and everlasting mercy held up to us by Christ. Like Saint Paul we may indeed be conscious of presenting ourselves “in weakness and fear and with much trepidation” and without “the persuasive force of ‘wise’ arguments”, but with the word of God we do possess always “the convincing power of the Spirit”. And with Saint Paul let us be always ready to speak truthfully to our people, saying: “Your faith rests not on the wisdom of men but on the power of God”[3].
4. May the lasting results of your course in Rome be a renewed commitment to God’s word.
Continue, dear brothers, to study the word of God, to meditate on it and to live it. Believe in God’s word with all your hearts. Preach it, in union with the whole Church, in all its purity and integrity.
And finally, surrender your own lives totally before its demands and inspirations.
And may Mary, Spouse of the Holy Spirit and Mother of priests, sustain each of you in your ministry of the word and in your priestly consecration to Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word, who “became flesh and made his dwelling among us”[4].
[1] Cfr. Presbyterorum Ordinis, 19.
[2] Ibid, 4, 13.
[3] 1 Cor. 2, 4-5.
[4] Io. 1, 14.
Dear friends,
1. I am very pleased to have this meeting with you, the delegates of the International Federation ILEP. Through you I greet those people who, with generous sensitivity, have taken upon themselves a noble cause to which they daily devote their energies of mind and heart. Your Federation of Antileprosy Associations, which includes the Associations in twenty-four industrialized countries and which works in close collaboration with some eighty countries where leprosy is endemic, performs the praiseworthy task of facing the problem of this disease in a unified manner; thanks to the proper coordination of initiatives and efforts, it is careful to avoid waste and delay.
On this occasion I am happy to be able to tell you how much I appreciate the lofty aims that inspire your work. I am likewise glad to offer you a word of encouragement to continue as you have begun. I myself have had some personal experience of the work being done to combat this disease: I was able to visit leprosaria during my pastoral visits to both Africa and Brazil. The amount of progress that still remains to be made is considerable, if we are to rely upon the statistics which tell us that at the present time no more that twenty percent of the people affected by Hansen’s Disease receive medical treatment. There still remain in the world millions of sufferers who are left to fend for themselves and who are exposed to the consequences of an illness that generally presents little resistance to adequate therapy. This is a fact that cannot fail to be on the conscience of anyone with Christian, or merely human, feelings.
2. You carry out your activities according to a worldwide strategy that seeks to take into account all the needs of the people concerned, both on the level of health and on the economic and social levels. For this purpose, in harmony with the programmes drawn up by the Alma Ata Conference of the World Health Organization, you have set yourselves the task of making your contribution on the level of “basic medicine”, which counts upon the responsible participation of the communities to which your assistance is directed, in the work of prevention and cure.
You also strive to go beyond any form of therapy that would involve the isolation of the sufferers.
By means of the provision of proper mobile services, it is in fact possible to offer patients the necessary treatment, enabling them to remain with their families and to continue working.
It is easy to see the advantages of this mode of procedure: besides sparing the sufferers the always traumatic experience of isolation, it helps to overcome the age-old prejudices and unjustified fears that still prevail in certain sections of society. The superstitions surrounding leprosy must be dispelled, in order to render ever more effective the various forms of combating it that are already providentially being used in the world.
3. The Associations belonging to your Federation, as also the other Organizations working in this field, are also directing their efforts to the sphere of scientific research. The directions being taken by these studies are numerous, and some are proving particularly promising: I am thinking of the research being done on the Hansen’s Disease bacillus, research which is seeking to determine its exact biochemical composition, to identify its characteristics more accurately, to measure the efficacy of new drugs, and to produce as soon as possible an effective anti-leprosy vaccine.
The financing of this research, as also the production of already known drugs, which are very effective and rapid but also very costly, calls for considerable economic resources. The funds which you can count upon are not sufficient to meet these requirements. You are therefore rightly engaging in an ever wider effort to alert society, with the aim of bringing home to every individual the plight of so many brothers and sisters who, simply because they are sick, find themselves condemned to a segregated and brutalized existence.
I am happy to encourage you in this humanitarian campaign. And I cannot fail to express the hope that the generosity of private individuals will be matched ever more by the efforts of International Organizations and Governments, so as to bring about a full and lasting victory in this far from hopeless battle.
4. This hope, which cannot fail to receive the support of every person of good will, certainly evokes a special echo in the hearts of those who recognize in Christ the Son of God, who through love became the brother of every human being. How can Christians fail to feel the challenge of that hard saying: “As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me”[1]?
The Church is preparing to re-live, in the mystery of Christmas, the wondrous event of the entry into human history of the Word made flesh. It was an event marked by poverty and rejection, by the hostility of some and the indifference of the majority. From the crib, in which he lay surrounded by simple shepherds - a category regarded as “impure” by the society of that time - the Son of man asks every believer how much he or she is doing to combat not only the bacillus of Hansen’s Disease but also the bacillus of so many other forms of leprosy, originating and developing in the contagious bacillus of selfishness.
May the contemplation of this prodigy of God’s love serve to foster in the hearts of the faithful renewed resolutions of fraternal solidarity; may it bring to you all the consolation of experiencing once more the truth of that “saying” preserved for us by the Apostle Paul: “It is more blessed to give than to receive”[2]. With this good wish I willingly invoke upon you, your fellow-workers and all who support you work with their generous contributions, the abundant blessing of Almighty God.
[1] Matth. 24, 45,
[2] Act. 20, 35.
Mr Ambassador,
It gives me pleasure to welcome Your Excellency as the diplomatic representative of your noble country. I am confident that your good will and your talents will contribute to the further strengthening of the existing friendship between the Republic of Iraq and the Holy See. I am grateful for the greetings that you bring me from His Excellency President Saddam Hussain and I would ask you to convey to him my sincere good wishes for his well-being and that of the Iraqi people.
The favour that at the present moment I most fervently beg of God for your people, and for all the peoples of the earth, is the blessing of peace. Peace is a fundamental and an all-embracing blessing.
Where peace is lacking, a basic element in human happiness is wanting and many of the other elements are diminished or destroyed. It is a blessing of such worth that we should be prepared to make sacrifices in order to obtain or preserve it. It benefits all and confers honour on those who seek it, and all have the duty to work for it with dignity but also with constancy and courage.
I therefore earnestly hope that both sides in the conflict between Iraq and Iran will show real readiness to reach a negotiated settlement based on justice and mutual respect. Distinguished international statesman are endeavouring to initiate such negotiations. I trust that they will be successful in their endeavours. I pray that God will give them strength and wisdom and prepare the hearts of all those involved in the conflict to accept the great blessing that is peace. May the peoples of the two countries, both of which are dear to me, act in accordance with the words “Make peace between brothers, and fear God that mercy may be shown to you”, and may they enjoy the grace and favour of the All-knowing Lord of mankind.
Your country’s Catholics are willing and prepared in every way to play their full part as citizens, since there is no contradiction between being a Christian and being a loyal member of one’s own nation, whether one belongs to an Arab country or to any other country. They wish to contribute to the best of their ability to material and spiritual progress, in difficult times for Iraq as well as in favourable circumstances. I would also mention the valuable, indeed often irreplaceable, work done by non-Iraqi religious men and women in the various Catholic institutions. I trust that they will be able to continue that work for the good not only of their Christian brothers and sisters but also of numerous other citizens of Iraq.
May all the people of Iraq soon enjoy peace and its attendant blessings. This is the wish of the whole Catholic Church, which, as I said when addressing the United Nations General Assembly last year, “in every place on earth proclaims a message of peace, prays for peace, educates for peace”.
I invoke divine favour also on Your Excellency and your own mission, that it may effectively serve the cause of peace.
Monday, 22 December 1980
Esteemed Nobel Prize-winners,
1. I am sincerely happy and honoured at being able to greet in you a number of illustrious personalities of science who, although you come from different countries, are linked in brotherhood by the ideal you share: the ideal of disinterested seeking for truth in the various fields of human experience. The high honour that has been granted to you as a reward for your long labours is a significant recognition of your contribution to advancing man’s knowledge of himself and of the world about him.
As I look at you, my thoughts go to all who have been given the same award and also to those who, with less success but with no less generosity, have dedicated and are still dedicating their lives to patient investigation of the complex aspects of reality with the hope of discovering a new secret which has remained hidden in some page of the marvellous book of nature.
In greeting you, gentlemen, I wish to honour this vast array of scientists and express my deep appreciation and gratitude for their labours. Even if their efforts are not always crowned with success, their passionate dedication to truth enriches the spiritual heritage of mankind.
2. During the colloquium organized by the “Nova Spes” association you have reflected on a theme that is highly relevant to the present time: Man amid hopes and threats. I am anxious to hear from you the conclusions that you have reached on a topic which is becoming of keener interest day by day in view of the development of scientific research.
On many occasions I have felt obliged to call the attention of people in positions of responsibility to the dangers for humanity that can derive from a distorted use of scientific discoveries. The future of the world is threatened at its roots by those very advances that bear the clearest imprint of man’s genius. This is the result of utilizing scientific progress for ends that have nothing to do with science. Science is for truth and truth for man, and man reflects as an image[1] the eternal transcendent Truth that is God. The experience of history, however, in particular recent history, shows scientific advances being used frequently against man, at times in terrifying ways. During the journey I am soon to make to the Far East I intend to go to Hiroshima, in order to pray in the place that was the first to know the dreadful destructive power of atomic energy.
Each one of you could speak at length on the prospects for the development of research in his own field. He could also elaborate on the dangers of distorted applications of the expected developments Today there are extensive possibilities for manipulating man. Tomorrow those possibilities will be even more extensive. Is there any need for me to emphasize the danger of radical dehumanisation that man is running if he advances madly along this road?
3. The question that has today become dramatically urgent is what criterion is to be followed in order not to suffer such disastrous consequences. When speaking to scientists and students in the Cologne cathedral on 15 November last, I said: “Technical science, aimed at transforming the world, is justified on the basis of the service it renders to man and humanity”[2]. This, gentlemen, is the decisive criterion: the criterion of serving man, the whole man, in the whole of his spiritual and bodily subjectivity.
Our culture is permeated in all fields by a largely functional notion of science, namely, that what is decisive is technical success. The fact of being technically able to produce a certain result is held by many to be sufficient motive for not having to ask further questions about the legitimacy of the process leading to the result, or even about the legitimacy of the result in itself. Clearly, such a view leaves no room for a supreme ethical value or even for the very notion of truth.
The consequences of such a minimal view of science have not been slow in appearing: scientific progress is not always accompanied by a similar improvement in man’s living conditions.
Unwished-for and unforeseen effects have been brought about, causing serious concern in ever wider sectors of the population. It is enough to think of the problem of the environment as a result of the progress of industrialization. Serious doubts have thus arisen about the capability of progress as a whole to serve man.
Is it any surprise that people are beginning today to speak of a legitimacy crisis for science, and indeed of a crisis regarding the course to be set for the whole of our scientific culture? Science alone is incapable of giving a complete answer to the issue of the basic significance of human life and activity. Their significance is revealed when reason, going beyond the physical datum, uses metaphysical methods to attain to the contemplation of the “final causes” and there discovers the supreme explanations that can throw light on human events and give them meaning.
The search for final significance is complex by nature and exposed to the danger of error, and man would often remain groping in the dark if he were not aided by the light of faith. The Christian revelation has made an inestimable contribution to the awareness that modern man has been able to attain of his own dignity and his own rights. I have no hesitation in repeating here what I said to the members of UNESCO: “The whole of the affirmations concerning man belongs to the very substance of Christ’s message and of the mission of the Church, in spite of all that critics may have declared about this matter”[3].
4. There is no intention of ignoring or underestimating the tensions that have arisen in the course of history between the Church and the modern natural sciences. The remembrance of those conflicts cannot fail to grieve the believer of today, who is better aware of the mistaken appraisals and the defective methods that gave rise to that opposition. Faith and science belong to two different orders of knowledge which cannot be superimposed on each other.
If the distinction between the orders of knowledge is respected and if both science and theology proceed with their investigations without being unmindful of the methodological principles proper to each, there is no fear that they will reach contradictory results. We can indeed be confident that, in that case, the two orders of knowledge will establish a beneficial dialogue through which man will be able to investigate more and more penetratingly the truth in all its aspects. For both reason and faith derive from the same divine source of all truth.
The believer knows well that all that exists springs from a word uttered by the Creator, from an initial fiat, which already contained all things and their universal order. Consequently, the believer holds that the world has an explanation and that, as science advances arduously and tiresomely, even if at times it hesitates or loses its way, it must reach an understanding that the universe constitutes - as the very etymology of the word “universe” indicates - a complex order in which the various elements are harmoniously related with one another.
In the same way, the great scientists are convinced that the final aim of natural science is the discovery of a fundamental law - the simplest possible, but because of its very simplicity the most difficult to grasp - to explain the constitution of the universe. The scientist thinks that a single principle governs all things and their basic interactions[4].
And so the issue today is no longer that of opposition between science and faith. A new period has begun: the efforts of scientists and theologians must now be directed to developing a constructive dialogue, making it possible to examine more and more deeply the fascinating mystery of man and also to foil the threats to man that are unfortunately growing daily more grave.
5. Gentlemen, the part that you can play in this regard is of extraordinary importance. The high award through which recognition has been given not only to the results of your studies but also to your generous dedication for many years to the noble task of scientific research gives you particular competence as partners in this dialogue with the representatives of theological knowledge.
The efforts you will devote to this inter-disciplinary exchange, together with the corresponding efforts of the experts in “the science of God”, will encourage significant progress in the comprehension of truth, which is a complex unity that can be grasped only if viewed from many sides, only if it is the meeting point of different forms of open-ended and complementary knowledge.
In particular, it will encourage more complete knowledge of man, of the components of his being, and of the historical and yet transcendental dimension of his existence.
Man will then be seen ever more clearly for what he is: an end, never a means; a subject, never an object; a goal, never merely a stage on the way to a goal. In a word, man will be seen as a person, the only legitimate attitude to whom is that of unconditional respect. Respect for man will therefore become the supreme test for judging every employment of science and every concrete planning of new experiments that could be made possible by technology.
The future of mankind depends on these basic ethical values. To ignore them would mean becoming responsible before posterity - if there is posterity - for the extremely serious crime of “offence against mankind”. You are the pioneers of science and you must act as watchful sentinels on the paths of progress, denouncing any form of intervention on man or his life environment that would be seen to be an attack on his dignity or his inalienable rights. This is a responsibility that falls to you. May it also be the reason for which you will truly deserve to be held up tomorrow for the admiration and gratitude of those who will have been saved by your courageous foresight from the risks of dreadful catastrophes.
We are approaching the day on which the Church recalls with joyful emotion the birth at Bethlehem of a Man who was also God. I would like to express the wish that the celebration of this Christmas will newly inspire every believer to devote all his energies to defending the unique and unrepeatable dignity of each human being. This wish of mine is also my heart’s prayer to the Word of God who became man for love of man.
[1] Cfr. Gen. 1, 27.
[2] Ioannis Pauli PP. II Allocutio in Templo Coloniae habita, die 15 nov. 1980: vide supra, pp. 1200-1211.
[3] Eiusdem Allocutio ad UNESCO habita, 10, die 2 iun. 1980: Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, III, 1 (1980) 1643.
[4] Cfr. Victor Weisskopf, The significance of Einstein's thought, Pontificia Academia Scientiarum, Einstein, Galileo, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1980, p. 31.
Speeches 1980 - Thursday, 11 December 1980