Speeches 1997 - Saturday, 15 March 1997
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
1. I am pleased to meet you, members of the Pious Sodality of Piceno and representatives of the numerous and active community of the Marches region living in Rome, who are rightly proud of the splendid church of San Salvatore in Lauro and the adjoining monumental complex.
I extend a cordial greeting to your President, Mr Franco Santolini, whom I thank for kindly giving me an interesting panoramic view of the life and activities of the association. I also greet the chaplain, Mons. Carlo Liberati, and all you who, by your presence, testify to the devotion and affection of all the people of the Marches region for the Pope.
2. Our meeting offers me the welcome opportunity to express my sincere appreciation for the efforts of your worthy Sodality to preserve and spread the traditional values of faith, industriousness and solidarity so deeply rooted in your land of origin. In the almost four centuries of your presence in the Eternal City, the people of the Marches region have been distinguished for their constant fidelity to the Church, for promoting a better knowledge of the history and life of the Marches provinces and for the many activities undertaken in the areas of formation, welfare and worship.
This church of San Salvatore in Lauro, with its adjoining parochial works, is an eloquent testimony to your collaboration in the pastoral activities of the Diocese and, above all, to your commitment to spreading among Romans and pilgrims from all over the world the devotion to the Blessed Virgin of Loreto. One of the oldest and most famous copies of this venerated image you lovingly preserve in this church.
3. My visit today takes place over a century since the one made by my venerable predecessor, Pope Pius IX, after having provided for the restoration of the church. Like many other ancient churches of the city, this monumental complex testifies to the ability of the citizens of Rome to blend with other peoples — in this case with the noble people of the Marches region — and how, together, they have lived and expressed the Gospel message in evocative examples of art and culture.
In thanking you for your kind welcome, I hope you will continue with ever greater apostolic zeal to co-operate actively in spreading the Gospel, especially in view of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. I urge you, both as individuals and as an association, to make your specific contribution of spiritual life and concrete projects in harmony with the Diocese of Rome, so that the many pilgrims will find in the heart of the city hospitable Christian communities dedicated to proclaiming the Gospel.
With these sentiments, as I invoke on each of those present, on all the members of the Pious Sodality of Piceno and on the whole community of the Marches region here in Rome the maternal protection of the Blessed Virgin of Loreto, I sincerely impart to each of you and to your families a special Apostolic Blessing.
1. Once again the Lord grants us the grace and joy of a meeting which is both solemn and familiar. I affectionately greet Cardinal William Wakefield Baum, whom I thank for his warm words. With him, I greet the prelates and officials of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the ordinary organ of the ministry of charity entrusted, with the power of the keys, to the Successor of Peter, that he may generously dispense the gifts of divine mercy.
I warmly greet the confessors of the Patriarchal Basilicas of the city: I express to them my gratitude for the generosity, constancy and humility they dedicate to the service of the confessional, through which they bring to souls God’s forgiveness and an abundance of his graces.
Lastly, I welcome the young priests and candidates soon to be ordained, who, making the most of the provident availability of the Apostolic Penitentiary, have wished to study more deeply the moral and canonical aspects regarding forms of human behaviour in greatest need of healing grace, and which must therefore be the special object of the Church’s motherly concern. Thus they will be suitably prepared for their future ministry, for which I encourage them and urge them to trust constantly in the Lord's help.
2. Our meeting takes place, not without precise significance, right before Easter. This circumstance naturally reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus, from whom alone comes our salvation and from whom therefore the sacraments draw their value. It is also worth remembering that this year, 1997, is one of the years of immediate preparation for the Jubilee of the new millennium, characterized as the year of the incarnate Son of God. Jesus, Son of God, came into the world “to bear witness to the truth” (Jn 18,37). He is the Lamb of God, “who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1,29).
These statements from John’s Gospel guide us to continue our reflection on the truth that makes us free, which was the subject of my message last year to the Cardinal Major Penitentiary, at the conclusion of a course on the internal forum. So the liberating truth is, in many respects, by virtue of grace, the premiss and fruit of the sacrament of Reconciliation.
In fact it is possible to free someone from evil only if he is aware of it as being evil. Unfortunately, on some fundamental themes of the moral order, socio-cultural conditions today do not favour clear awareness, because the customary boundaries and defences of the recent past have been torn down. As a result, many are undergoing a dulling of their personal sense of sin. People have even gone so far as to theorize the moral irrevelance and even the positive value of behaviour that objectively offends the essential order of things established by God.
3. This tendency is spreading throughout the vast field of man’s free action. It is not possible here to make a deep analysis of this phenomenon and its causes. However I would like to take this occasion to recall that, especially for the fruitful reception of the sacrament of Penance, the Pontifical Council for the Family on 12 February published a “Vademecum for Confessors”. This document is intended to clarify “some aspects of the moralilty of conjugal life”.
It expresses in the proper language of a working guide the Church’s unchanging doctrine on the objective moral order, as it has been constantly taught in previous documents on this subject. For the pastoral aim that distinguishes it, the Vademecum stresses the attitude of charitable understanding which should be shown to those who err through their lack of, or misguided perception of the moral norm, or, if aware of it, who fall because of human frailty and yet, touched by the Lord’s mercy, want to lift themselves up again.
This text deserves to be welcomed with trust and interior docility. It helps confessors in their demanding task to illumine, correct if necessary, and encourage the married faithful, or those who are preparing for marriage. Thus in the sacrament of Penance a task is carried out which, far from being reduced to reprimanding conduct opposed to the will of the Lord, Author of life, is open to a positive teaching and ministry of fostering the authentic love from which life springs.
4. The situation of moral confusion which affects so much of society also touches many believers, but, through the Church's ministry, the saving power of the Son of God made man is available for all. However, the difficulty of the situation should not discourage, but rather, encourage all the inventiveness of our pastoral charity.
Indeed the ministry of confession must not be conceived as a moment apart from the rest of Christian life, but as a privileged moment of convergence of catechesis, the prayer of the Church, the sense of repentance and the trusting acceptance of the Magisterium and the power of the keys.
Thus, forming the consciences of the faithful so that they may present themselves with the fullness of the proper dispositions for receiving God’s pardon through the priest’s absolution cannot be limited to warnings, explanations and admonitions which the priest should and must normally impart to the penitent in the act of confession. Apart from this strictly sacramental moment, constant guidance is necessary, expressed in the classical and irreplaceable forms of pastoral activity and Christian teaching: the catechism, adapted to the various age groups and cultural levels, preaching, prayer meetings, religious education classes in Catholic associations and schools, an incisive presence in the means of social communication.
5. Through this ongoing religious and moral formation, it will be easier for the faithful to grasp the deep reasons for the moral magisterium, realizing that wherever the Church in her teaching defends life by condemning murder, suicide, euthanasia and abortion, wherever she safeguards the holiness of conjugal relations and procreation, by directing them back to God’s plan for marriage, she is not imposing a law of her own but reaffirming and explaining the divine law, both natural and revealed. Her firmness in denouncing deviations from the moral order stems precisely from this.
In order to assimilate this objective criterion, the faithful must be taught to accept the Magisterium of the Church even when it is not proposed in a solemn form: in this regard it would be well to remember what the First Vatican Council declared and the Second Vatican Council reaffirmed, namely, that when the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Church proposes a divinely revealed doctrine it is a rule of divine and Catholic faith (cf. Denzinger-Schönmetzer, 3011; Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium LG 25).
In the light of these criteria, we realize how unjustifiable it is to oppose the rights of conscience to the objective force of the law interpreted by the Church; in fact, if it is true that the act performed with an invincibly erroneous conscience is not culpable, it is also true that objectively it remains a disorder. It is therefore each person’s duty to form his own conscience properly.
6. Our pastoral task demands that we proclaim the truth without compromises or shortcuts. Nonetheless St Paul warns us that we must live according to “the truth in love” (Ep 4,15). God is infinite love and does not want the death of the sinner but that he be converted and live (cf. Ez Ez 18,23). We priests, his ministers, must counter the devastating force of sin with the consoling yet demanding announcement of forgiveness. Jesus died and rose for this reason. During this year dedicated to Christ the Redeemer, as we meditate on the unfathomable riches of Redemption, we will obtain the gift of experiencing within ourselves the saving divine mercy and so increasingly, after the example of Christ, we will be teachers who illumine and fathers who welcome in God’s name and by his authority. In fact, we are called to say with St Paul: “We are ambassadors for Christ.... We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2Co 5,20).
As I hope for abundant graces for the fruitful exercise of this ministry of reconciliation, I impart a special Apostolic Blessing to you, priests and candidates for the priesthood present here, who represent for me, as universal Pastor, the whole world’s priests and candidates for the priesthood.
1. “Non sum dignus, non sum dignus”. So, dear young people, over the last few days I read a French book: Jean Paul II le résistant. The Pope is resistant. Today I see that I have earned a new title: “disruptive”, because I have disrupted your programme. But we must come “ad rem”. Do you know what coming “ad rem” means? I do not want to examine you in Latin. “Ad rem” means getting to the point, to the subject, to what is written here on the papers I have in my hands. Then we will see.
“Mission means: pass the Word!”.
Dear young people of Rome, this is the slogan that has reverberated more than once in today’s meeting and that well summarizes the meaning of what the Church of Rome is celebrating: the city mission. In fact what is the city mission if not our joint commitment to receive and transmit to everyone, in our daily living, the Word of God which goes straight to the heart of man? The Word of God, as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews, “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (He 4,12).
2. Dear young people, I am saying this to tell you in advance about the handing on of this Word. I am handing on to you, that is, I am “passing” on to you Mark’s Gospel.
Gospel means “good news” and the “good news” is Jesus, the Son of God, who became man to save the world. The heart of the Gospel is precisely the preaching of Jesus, his actions, his Death and Resurrection; it is Jesus Christ, he himself, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died and rose again for everyone.
During our meeting you listened to the reading of a very significant passage from Mark's Gospel: Jesus’ twofold question to his disciples — “Who do men say that I am?”; “And who do you say that I am?” — and Peter’s reply on behalf of them all: “You are the Christ” (cf. Mk Mc 8,27-30). This answer is the synthesis of Mark's Gospel: all that you can read before is a slow, progressive journey towards this proclamation that Jesus is the Messiah. All that follows is a continuous explanation of how Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Messiah — and this is something absolutely new —when in obedience to the Father, on the Cross, he dies for love of us. Seeing his death, the Roman centurion exclaims: “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mc 15,39). Here we see condensed Mark’s missionary concern and his deepest conviction. In the presence of the greatest act of love a person can make, “to lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15,13), it is possible to be converted, to change one’s life. Even the centurion, who does not belong to the chosen people, recognizes Jesus as the Son of God, the Saviour not only of a people or a nation, but of every man and woman who accepts him and acknowledges him in the moment of his extreme humiliation, in his extreme abasement.
3. Dear young people, in the passage from Mark’s Gospel that refers to the Resurrection, the angel says to the women: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen, he is not here.... He is going before you to Galilee” (Mc 16,6-7), as if to tell us not to stand idle before the tomb. If you want to meet him — the angel repeats to all of us — follow the road that Jesus shows you. “He is going before you to Galilee”, and to see him alive and risen you must join him wherever he makes his appointment with you. Two episodes in Mark that make us think.
If this is the content of the Gospel, it demands to be “passed on”, transmitted to others. And here is the mission, the apostolic mission, the mission of the women, the first apostles like the Magdalene, the mission of Peter, of the Twelve, and now the city mission; the mission of the citizens, of all of you, people of Rome, because the city mission is a unique occasion for you also, dear young people of the Roman parishes, associations and movements, to “pass on” the Word of God and not to miss your appointment with him. To know Jesus in his Word; to know Jesus crucified and risen through his Word, through the Gospel of Mark.
The city mission first of all means understanding that there is no authentic Christianity if there is no mission activity, that Jesus is a gift of God that must be brought to everyone.
The city mission means learning from Christ to come out of ourselves, from our groups, from our parishes, from our beautiful assemblies, to bring his Gospel to the many friends we know who are waiting with us for the salvation that only Christ knows how and is able to give.
4. Go, then. Young people to young people. But who are the young people? You are the young people of Rome!
From the many meetings I have had with you over these years, I have formed a clear enough idea of what you young people are like.
You have many positive aspirations, many desires; you want to be and you consider yourselves protagonists of life. You want to live in freedom and throw yourselves freely into doing things that you like to do best.
However, this freedom can be a risk. Yes, freedom is a risk: it is a great challenge and a great risk. It can be used well and it can be used badly. If freedom does not obey the truth it can crush you. There are many who are crushed by their freedom. This happens when their freedom is not guided by what is true. It cannot be a blind force left to instinct. Freedom must be guided by the truth.
It is the truth that makes us truly free and this truth comes from Christ, indeed it is Christ. We read in John’s Gospel: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8,31-32).
It is therefore good for you to know Jesus Christ, the unifying centre of your existence, and to make him known to your friends. This is why today I am giving you his Gospel and I ask you to be its courageous missionaries. Go into all the world. Jesus made his Gospel known to his Apostles and then he said: go into all the world. I am saying this to you, young people of Rome: go into all that world which is Rome.
So, know Jesus Christ! Be the first to know him. Through constant reading and meditation, through prayer which is a constant dialogue between life and the Word of Jesus. To see means already to take action.
So I say to you: know the Gospel. You, first of all. Know the Gospel by seeking help from wise guides and witnesses to Christ. Ask for help to know and live that love which is the heart of the Gospel. From whom? From your parents, your grandparents, your teachers, your priests, your catechists, the leaders of the groups and movements to which you belong. They all help to serve you, helping you to know the Gospel better. By knowing the Gospel, you will encounter Christ and do not be afraid of what he may ask of you.
Because Christ is also demanding, thank God! He is demanding! When I was young like you, this Christ was demanding and he convinced me. Were he not demanding, there would be nothing to listen to, to follow. But if he is demanding, it is because he offers values and it is the values he preaches that are demanding.
5. At the same time make the Gospel of Christ known to your friends, to other young people who are not here today and who do not usually associate with your groups. All those who are outside the parish, outside the pastoral milieu, they too are waiting for this Word. Christ is also seeking them through you. So, this gives you an idea of how the young people's city mission must be carried out.
This mission asks you to make generous efforts in this direction. You must be serious about listening to Jesus, following Jesus and witnessing to what you believe. See, judge and act: let these three words also accompany you.
It is not enough to go to church or to your groups. The time has come when you must reach out to those who do not come, to those who are looking for the meaning of life and do not find it because no one proclaims it to them. You must be people who know how to announce this good news. The time has come for the whole Church of Rome to open her doors and reach out to the men and women, the young people who live in this city as though Christ did not exist.
What does Christ ask of you? Jesus asks you not to be ashamed of him and to commit yourselves to proclaiming him to your peers. Make your own this phrase of Paul to the Romans: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith”. This is what Paul wrote to the Romans, to us (Rm 1,16). Do not be afraid, because Jesus is with you!
Do not be afraid of getting lost: the more you give of yourselves, the more you will find yourselves! This is the logic of a sincere self-giving, as the Second Vatican Council teaches.
Many of your friends do not have guides, reference points, to which they can turn in order to learn to know Jesus and overcome those moments of difficulty, disillusionment and uneasiness that can arise. How can we fail to think then of your less fortunate peers who have to reckon with even more serious problems such as unemployment, the resulting difficulty in forming a family, drug addiction or other forms of escape from reality? As you know well, many do not even have the support of a family, because today many families are experiencing a disturbing crisis. You, dear young people, must become a family for them, reference points for your peers. Become friends to those who have no friends, become family to those who have no family, community to those who have no community. This is the city mission of Rome's young citizens. The Pope too is a citizen of Rome. In the next few months [at the beginning of 1998, ed. note], as a good citizen of Rome, I intend to visit the Campidoglio. Let us hope that my young fellow citizens may be with me.
6. The Word of God, as I wrote in the Message to young people for the 12th World Youth Day, “is not an imposition, unhinging the doors of conscience; it is a persuasive voice, a free gift that, if it is to have a saving effect in each one’s concrete existence, calls for an attitude of readiness and responsibility, a pure heart and a free mind” (n. 6; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 28 August 1996, p. 2). Sow the Word. It will be up to the soil to accept it or not. Jesus respects each person’s freedom. When he calls you to follow him, he always starts by saying “If you want to...” (cf. Mt Mt 19,21).
Engage in dialogue, in order to proclaim the word of God. Dialogue is the method of your mission: a dialogue that first of all demands a meeting on the level of personal relations and that seeks to bring the interlocutors out of their isolation, their mutual mistrust, in order to create mutual esteem and sympathy. A dialogue that demands a meeting on the level of seeking the truth; and again, on the level of action, which tries to establish the conditions for collaboration on concrete objectives of service to one’s neighbour. A dialogue that requires the Christian to be convinced of the truth, to be clearly aware that we are witnesses to Christ, the way, the truth and the life.
I know that a lot of efforts have already been made in the Diocese, including the training of missionaries, and, in the near future, the educators of young people. I encourage you all to continue in this direction by exercising your creativity, so that together you can “pass the Word” to everyone.
7. Dear young people of Rome, at the end of this meeting, allow me to thank you for coming and also for your warm welcome. It was so warm that at one stage I was wondering if I could survive this meeting!
I thank the Cardinal Vicar for his words and Carmela, the girl who greeted me on my arrival and even cordially kissed me; I thank all those who prepared and co-ordinated this meeting, and they are many; I thank all those who gave their personal testimony and who put their artistic talents at the service of the Gospel and young people. And they are numerous! I was not able to see much, but what I was able to see and hear engrossed me.
At this point I would also like to greet a delegation of French young people who, in preparation for the Paris meeting, through the magazine Phosphore wrote to the Pope and wished to entrust their letters to him. I thank all those who wished, in this way, to be in touch with us.
Dear French friends, take the Pope’s cordial greeting and that of the young people of Rome gathered here with you today to your peers. Tell them that we will be pleased to meet them from 18 to 24 August in Paris and that we are preparing for this meeting with intense prayer.
The Holy Father then greeted the young French delegation with these extemporaneous words:
We will be very happy to meet you in Paris. You young French people must testify to our wish to prepare and you must show all the more availability on your part. I know that the French Bishops and the youth of France are full of enthusiasm. May you continue in your efforts.
So at the end, before giving you the Gospel, I wish to make an appointment with you all for World Youth Day, whose theme will be: “Teacher, where are you staying? Come and see” (Jn 1,38-19). I know that you are already getting organized and that from Rome large numbers of you will be leaving for Paris. It will a be a great occasion for experiencing together the joy of the Gospel. Those will be days when the Word, if allowed to act, will touch your lives, to plan exciting projects for your personal future and for the future of the Church and society.
Let us call upon Our Lady “Salus Populi Romani”. May she accompany us in this spiritual journey towards our meeting in Paris. And as I assure each of you and your families of a special remembrance in my prayer, I cordially bless you all.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
“Itinerant People” from Alsace,
1. I am pleased to receive you during the pilgrimage you are making to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul. I greet you most cordially together with Archbishop Charles Amarin Brand of Strasbourg and the representatives of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, who have accompanied you.
We are on the eve of the great week of the Lord’s Passion. His death on the Cross is the clearest expression of God’s love for us. Jesus’ sacrifice for all humanity confers on each individual the dignity of a person loved by God. All human beings must be respected, loved and served, because they are brothers or sisters of Christ. When this relationship with the Saviour is ignored, the way is open to humiliation or contempt, which one tries to legitimize by unjust discrimination.
2. I know your attachment to the faith, the Catholic Church and the Pope. Constantly renew your life as believers by drawing on the sources of God's word and by remaining faithful to community and personal prayer. As I said when I received those attending a meeting for the pastoral care of Gypsies on 8 June 1995: “A new evangelization is necessary, addressed to each member as well as to a beloved portion of the pilgrim People of God” (L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 28 June 1995, p. 5); this initiative will help you overcome the temptations that are strong today: to withdraw into yourselves, to seek refuge in sects or to squander your religious heritage and turn to a materialism that makes it impossible to recognize God’s presence.
3. Your visit gives me the opportunity to recall that on 4 May I will have the joy of beatifying in Rome Ceferino Jiménez Malla, a Gypsy admirable for the seriousness and wisdom of his human and Christian life. He lived life to the full, for he led a holy life in fidelity to God and in the manner proper to Gyspies. He died a martyr of the faith, clasping to his breast the rosary he recited every day with tender, filial devotion to Mary. He is a beautiful example of fidelity to the faith for all Christians, and especially for you who are close to him because of your ethnic and cultural ties.
In the footsteps of Ceferino Jiménez Malla, there are certainly persons among you who can organize pastoral activity in your Christian community of itinerant people. In the local Church, the ordinations of men from your people to the diaconate and to other ministries are positive facts and must continue.
4. This meeting enables me to offer you my best wishes for the holy celebrations of Easter, when we will celebrate the central event of salvation history, the foundation of Christian hope. Through Baptism, the sacrament of spiritual rebirth, you share in Jesus’ Death and Resurrection; you are given a new life. Easter is the time for renewing our baptismal promises: do it with conviction and trust in the love of our Lord. It is he who will give you strength and courage in the difficulties you encounter on your way.
As I invoke the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints who are dear to you, I impart my Apostolic Blessing to those of you present here, to your families and to your communities.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
1. I am pleased to offer a warm welcome to the distinguished representatives of End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT). With them I greet the members of the European Centre for Bioethics and the Quality of Life. I address a particular greeting to Mons. Piero Monni, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at the World Tourism Organization, and thank him for his courteous words on behalf of those present.
2. For years your association has been committed to eliminating the global scourge of child prostitution. This commitment, which brings together Christians and non-Christians, aims not only at fighting this horrible crime, but above all at defending its victims.
How can we not express esteem and respect for such a praiseworthy work? How can we fail to hope that it will be supported in a concrete, committed way by the international community and by individual governments, political leaders and social workers, by private institutions and by the whole of civil society?
No one can remain indifferent to the painful cry of millions of innocents whose dignity is trampled upon and who are robbed of their future, nor can he refuse to accept his own responsibilities.
3. On this subject, the recent Stockholm Congress organized by this association in collaboration with the Swedish Government and other international organizations marked a milestone in solving this most serious poblem. Appealing to the conscience of those responsible for humanity’s future, this meeting proposed timely political, legislative and social measures to deal effectively with this very serious problem at the national and international level.
Sharing the concerns expressed, I would like to encourage ECPAT to continue the necessary denunciation of abuses, as well as to study their causes and appropriate remedies.
4. As everyone knows, child prostitution often originates in the widespread crisis affecting families. While in developing countries the family is the victim of conditions of extreme poverty and the lack of adequate social structures, in wealthy countries it is influenced by a hedonistic view of life which can reach the point of destroying the moral conscience, thereby justifying any means of obtaining pleasure.
In this context, how can we not see pornography as a constant incitement to abuse one’s fellow man?
These disturbing manifestations, which corrode the dignity of the person and ?the future of family life, have an inevitable impact on its weakest members and on minors.
5. In the face of so much suffering your association is committed to checking the expansion of these phenomena, counting on the effective collaboration of men and women of goodwill.
I fervently wish that your appeals will be heard attentively at all levels of social life: by political leaders and sociologists, by lawyers and economists, as well as by those holding senior posts in education, health care, trade unions and local agencies.
In fact, only joint action by national and international institutions, associations and individuals will be able to put an end to this very serious social plague.
I ask the Lord to give you strength to persevere in the work you have undertaken, and as I commend each one of you, your co-workers, your families and all who are in your care to the motherly protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I cordially bless you all.
Speeches 1997 - Saturday, 15 March 1997