Benedict XVI visit to diocese of San Marino, Italy
On World Refugee Day
"Guarantee a Welcome and Dignified Living Conditions for
Refugees"
SERRAVALLE, San Marino, JUNE 19, 2011 - Here is the address
Benedict XVI delivered today in Italian and French before praying the Marian
prayer of the Angelus after celebrating Mass in the Olympic Stadium of
Serravalle at the beginning of his one-day trip to the Diocese of San
Marino-Montefeltro.
* * *
[In Italian, he said:]
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
As we conclude this celebration, the midday hour invites us
to turn in prayer to the Virgin Mary. Also in this land, our Most Holy Mother is
venerated in various shrines, ancient and modern. To her I entrust all of you
and the whole Sammarinese and Montefeltrina population, in a particular way
persons suffering in body and spirit. At this moment I address a special thought
of gratitude to all those who cooperated in the preparation and organization of
my visit. My heartfelt thank you!
[In French, he said:]
I am happy to recall that today in Dax, France, Sister
Marguerite Rutan, Daughter of Charity, has been proclaimed blessed. In the
second half of the 18th century she worked with great commitment in the hospital
in Dax, but in the tragic persecution following the Revolution, she was
sentenced to death for her Catholic faith and fidelity to the Church.
I participate spiritually in the joy of the Daughters of
Charity and of all the faithful who, in Dax, are taking part in the
beatification of Sister Marguerite Rutan, luminous witness of the love of Christ
for the poor.
[In Italian, he said:]
Finally, I wish to remind that tomorrow is World Refugee
Day. On this occasion, this year we mark the 60th anniversary of the adoption of
the international convention to protect those who are persecuted and forced to
flee their own countries. I urge civil authorities and all people of good will
to guarantee a welcome and dignified living conditions for refugees, until they
can freely and safely return to their homeland.
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Papal Homily at Mass in Serravalle's Olympic
Stadium
"The Unity Created By Love Is a Greater Unity Than a Merely
Physical One"
SERRAVALLE, San Marino, JUNE 19, 2011 - Here is a
translation of the homily Benedict XVI delivered today during a public Mass
celebrated at the Olympic Stadium of Serravalle at the beginning of his one-day
trip to the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro.
* * *
Dear brothers and sisters,
It is my great joy to be able to break the bread of God's
Word and the Eucharist with you, and to address to you, dear people of San
Marino, my most cordial greeting. A special thought goes to the Captains Regent
and to the other political and civil authorities present at this Eucharistic
celebration. With affection, I greet your Bishop Luigi Negri, and thank him for
the kind words he addressed to me; with him, I also greet all of the priests and
faithful of the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro. I greet each one of you and I
express to you my heartfelt gratitude for the kindness and affection with which
you have welcomed me.
I have come to share with you in the joys and hopes, the
efforts and commitments, the ideals and aspirations of this diocesan community.
I know that, also here, difficulties, problems and concerns are not lacking. I
want to assure everyone of my closeness and my remembrance of you in prayer, and
I unite to this my encouragement to persevere in your witness to human and
Christian values, which are so profoundly rooted in the faith and history of
this land and its people, with their granite-like faith, of which His Excellency
spoke.
Today we celebrate the feast of the Most Holy Trinity: God
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the feast day of God -- of the center
of our faith. When we think of the Trinity, the aspect of mystery most often
comes to mind: they are Three and they are One, one only God in three Persons.
In reality, God in His greatness cannot be other than a mystery for us, and yet
He has revealed Himself: we can know Him in His Son, and so also know the Father
and the Holy Spirit.
Today's liturgy instead draws our attention not so much to
the mystery, as to the reality of love that is contained in this first and
supreme mystery of our faith. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one,
because [they are] love, and love is the absolute life-giving force; the unity
created by love is a greater unity than a merely physical one. The Father gives
all to the Son, the Son receives all from the Father with gratitude; and the
Holy Spirit is like the fruit of this reciprocal love of the Father and the Son.
The texts of today's Holy Mass speak of God and, therefore,
speak of love. They dwell not so much upon the mystery of the three Persons, as
they do upon the love which constitutes their substance and unity and trinity in
the same moment.
The first passage we heard was taken from the Book of
Exodus -- I looked at it in a recent Wednesday catechesis -- and it is
surprising that the revelation of God's love occurs after the people have sinned
gravely. The Covenant pact has just been concluded at Mount Sinai, and already
the people fail in fidelity. Moses' absence lengthens, and the people say: "But
where has this Moses gone, and where is his God?" And they ask Aaron to make
them a god that is visible, accessible, manageable, within man's reach, instead
of this invisible, distant, mysterious God. Aaron consents and fashions a golden
calf. Coming down the mountain, Moses sees what has occurred and breaks the
tables of the Covenant -- which is already broken, ruptured -- two stones on
which were written the "Ten Words," the concrete content of their pact with God.
All seems lost, the friendship, right from the beginning -- already broken.
And yet, in spite of the people's very grave sin, God --
through Moses' intercession -- decides to forgive and invites Moses to reascend
the mountain to receive again His law, the Ten Commandments, and to renew the
pact. Moses then asks God to reveal Himself, to let him see His face. But God
does not show His face; rather, He reveals His being, filled with goodness, with
these words: "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Exodus 34:8). And this is the
Face of God. God's definition of Himself manifests His merciful love: a love
that conquers sin, covers it, eliminates it. And we can always be secure in this
goodness, which never leaves us. There can be no clearer revelation. We have a
God who abandons destroying the sinner and who wants to manifest His love in a
still more profound and surprising way, precisely before the sinner, in order to
offer [him] the possibility of conversion and forgiveness.
The Gospel completes the revelation that we hear about in
the first reading, because it indicates to what point God has shown His mercy.
The Evangelist John relates this expression of Jesus: "God so loved the world
that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish by
have eternal life" (John 3:16). In the world there is evil, there is egoism,
there is malice, and God could come to judge this world, to destroy evil, to
castigate those who work in darkness. Instead He reveals His love for the world,
His love for man, despite his sin, and He sends what is most precious to Him:
His only-begotten Son. And not only does He send Him, but He makes Him a gift to
the world. Jesus is the Son of God who was born for us, who lived for us, who
healed the sick, forgave sins, welcomed everyone. Responding to the love that
comes from the Father, the Son gave His very life for us: on the Cross God's
merciful love reaches its culmination. And it is on the Cross that the Son of
God obtains for us a participation in eternal life, which is communicated to us
through the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so, in the mystery of the Cross, the
three divine Persons are present: the Father, who gives His only-begotten Son
for the salvation of the world; the Son, who carries out the Father's plan to
the very end; the Holy Spirit -- poured out by Jesus at the moment of death –
who comes to make us sharers in the divine life, to transform our existence, so
that it might be animated by divine love.
Dear brothers and sisters! Faith in the Trinitarian God has
also characterized this Church of San Marino-Montefeltro throughout the course
of its ancient and glorious history. The evangelization of this land is
attributed to the stonecutting Saints Marino and Leone, who in the middle of the
third century after Christ, arrived in Rimini from Dalmatia. For their holiness
of life, they were consecrated -- the one a priest, the other a deacon -- by
Bishop Gaudentius, and they were sent by him to the inland, one to Mount
Feretro, which then took the name of San Leo, and the other to Mount Titano,
which then took the name San Marino. Beyond the historical matters -- which is
not our task to go into -- it is worth affirming how Marino and Leo brought new
perspectives and values into the context of this local reality, with faith in
the God who had revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, establishing the birth of a
culture and of a society centered on the human person -- the image of God, and
therefore the bearer of rights that precede all human legislation. The variety
of the different ethnicities -- Romans, Goths, and then Lombards -- that came in
contact with them, at times in very conflicting ways, found in the common
reference to the faith a potent element for ethical, cultural, social, and in
some sense, political edification. It was evident to their eyes that a project
for the building of civilization could not be considered complete until all of
the elements constituting the people had become a living Christian community,
well structured and well built upon faith in the Trinitarian God.
Rightly, therefore, can we say that the wealth of this
people, your wealth, dear people of San Marino, was and is the faith, and that
this faith created a truly unique society. In addition to this faith, it is also
necessary to remember [San Marino's] absolute fidelity to the Bishop of Rome, to
whom this Church has always looked with devotion and affection, as well as its
attention to the great tradition of the Eastern Church, and its profound
devotion to the Virgin Mary.
You are rightly proud and grateful for all the Holy Spirit
has accomplished down the centuries in your Church. But you also know that the
best way to appreciate an inheritance is by cultivating and enriching it. In
reality, you are called to develop this precious deposit in one of the most
decisive moments in history. Today, your mission is met by the necessity of
confronting profound and rapid cultural, social, economic, and political changes
that have determined new trends and modified mentalities, customs and
sensibilities. Also here, in fact, as elsewhere, difficulties and obstacles are
not wanting, due above all to hedonistic models that darken the mind and risk
annihilating morality altogether. The temptation has crept in to hold that a
man's wealth is not the faith, but his personal and social power, his
intelligence, his culture and his ability to scientifically, technologically and
socially manipulate reality. And so, also in these lands, some have begun to
substitute the faith and Christian values with presumed riches that, in the end,
reveal their emptiness and their inability to hold up to the great promise of
the true, the good, the beautiful and the just which, for centuries, your
ancestors identified with the experience of the faith.
We should not forget, then, the crisis of not a few
families, which is aggravated by the widespread psychological and spiritual
frailty of married couples, as well as the hardships experienced by many
educators in obtaining formative continuity for the young who are conditioned by
many uncertainties, first among them [the uncertainty of] their role in society
and of the possibility of work.
Dear friends! I am well aware of the commitment of each
element of this particular Church to promoting the Christian life in its various
aspects. I exhort all of the faithful to be as leaven in the world, showing
yourselves -- whether in Montefeltro or in San Marino -- as Christians who are
present, resourceful and coherent. May priests, and men and women religious,
always live in heartfelt and effective ecclesial communion by helping and
listening to their diocesan pastor. The urgency of a renewal in vocations to the
priesthood and to special consecration makes itself felt also among you: I make
an appeal to families and to young people, to open their souls to a ready
response to the Lord's call. You will never regret being generous with God!
To you laity, I urge you to actively commit yourselves
within the community, so that, in addition to your particular civil, political,
social and cultural tasks, you will be able to find time and availability for
the life of faith, for the pastoral life. Dear people of San Marino! May you
remain firmly faithful to the patrimony constructed down the centuries through
the impetus of your great patrons, Marino and Leone. I invoke God's blessing
upon your path today and your path tomorrow, and I entrust all of you "to the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit" (2 Corinthians 13:11). Amen!
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Benedict XVI's Address to Politicians in San Marino
"Build a Community Founded on Shared Values"
SAN MARINO, San Marino, JUNE 19, 2011 - Here is a
translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered today at a meeting with
government authorities, elected officials and the diplomatic corps at the Public
Palace of San Marino. Maria Luisa Berti and Filippo Tamagnini, the two heads of
government, called the captains regent, were also present.
* * *
Most Serene Captains Regent,
Illustrious Gentlemen and Ladies!
My heartfelt gratitude for your hospitality, in particular
I express my gratitude to the captains regent, also for the courteous words they
addressed to me. I greet the members of the government and of the Congress, as
well as the diplomatic corps and all the other authorities gathered here. In
addressing you, I embrace ideally the whole people of San Marino. From its
birth, this republic has had friendly relations with the Apostolic See, and in
recent times they have been intensified and consolidated; my presence here, in
the heart of this ancient republic, expresses and confirms this friendship.
More than 17 centuries ago, a group of faithful, won over
to the Gospel by the preaching of Deacon Marin and his witness of holiness,
gathered around him to give life to a new community. Continuing with this
valuable heritage, the people of San Marino remained always faithful to the
values of the Christian faith, firmly anchoring to them their own peaceful
coexistence, according to criteria of democracy and solidarity. Down through the
centuries, your ancestors were aware of these Christian roots and were able to
make fruitful the great moral and cultural patrimony they had received, giving
life to an industrious and free people. Despite the exiguity of the territory,
[San Marino] has not failed to offer the bordering populations of the Italian
peninsula and to the whole world a particular contribution of civilization,
marked by peaceful coexistence and mutual respect.
Addressing you today, I rejoice to see your attachment to
this patrimony of values and I exhort you to preserve and appreciate it, because
it is at the foundation of your most profound identity, an identity that asks to
be fully assumed by the people and institutions of San Marino. Thanks to it, a
society can be built that is attentive to the true good of the human person, to
dignity and liberty, and capable of safeguarding the right of all peoples to
live in peace.
These are the foundations of a healthy laicism, within
which civil institutions must act with a constant commitment to the defense of
the common good. The Church, respectful of the legitimate autonomy that civil
authority must enjoy, collaborates with it, at the service of humanity, in the
defense of humanity's fundamental rights, of those ethical instances that are
inscribed in his very nature. Because of this, the Church is committed to
legislation that always promotes and protects human life from conception to its
natural end.
Moreover, it requests due recognition and active support
for the family. In fact, we know how the family institution is currently being
called into question, as if in an attempt to ignore its inalienable value. Those
who suffer the consequences [of these efforts] are the weakest social groups,
especially the young generations, who are more vulnerable and thus easily
exposed to disorientation, to situations of self-marginalization and to the
slavery of addictions. Education institutions often seek to give young people
adequate answers, and see the diminishing support of the family as an obstacle
to normal integration into the social fabric. Because of this, it is importance
to recognize that the family, just as God has constituted it, is the main
institution that can foster harmonious growth and the maturity that makes
individuals free and responsible, formed in deep and perennial values.
In the predicament of economic difficulties in the Italian
and international context, which also affects the San Marino community, I wish
my words to be of encouragement. We know that the years following the Second
World War were a time of economic restrictions, which obliged thousands of your
fellow citizens to emigrate. Then a period of prosperity arrived, in the wake of
developing the industries of trade and tourism, especially in that type of
summer enjoyed so close to the Adriatic coast.
During this phase of relative abundance there was a certain
loss of the Christian sense of life and of fundamental values. However, the San
Marino society manifests again a good vitality and conserves its best energies,
proof of this are the many charitable and voluntary initiatives to which
numerous fellow citizens of yours are dedicated. I would like to recall also the
numerous San Marino missionaries, lay and religious, who in the last decades
have left this land to take the Gospel of Christ to various parts of the world.
Not lacking, hence, are the positive forces that enable your community to
address and overcome the present situation of difficulty. To this end, I hope
that the question of border workers, who see their own occupation endangered,
will be able to be resolved taking into account the right to work and to the
protection of families.
Also in the Republic of San Marino, the present crisis
leads to a need to plan for the future, and it becomes a moment for discernment
(cf. Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, 21); in fact, it puts the entire social
fabric before the impelling need to address the problems with courage and a
sense of responsibility, with generosity and dedication, making reference to
that love of liberty that distinguishes your people. In this regard, I would
like to repeat the words addressed by Blessed John XIII to the Regents of the
Republic of San Marino during an official visit to the Holy See: "The love of
liberty," said my Predecessor, "boasts exquisitely among your Christian roots
and your ancestors, picking up their true meaning, taught you not to ever
separate their name from that of God, who is its irreplaceable foundation"
(Addresses, Messages, Conversations of the Holy Father John XIII, I, 341-343:
AAS 60 [1959], 423-424.
This warning maintains its everlasting value still today:
the liberty that institutions are called to promote and defend at the social
level is manifested more profoundly by the Spirit of God, whose life-giving
presence in the human heart gives the ability to [individuals to] direct
themselves toward and dedicate themselves to the good. As the Apostle Paul
affirms: "for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good
pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). And St. Augustine, commenting this passage,
stresses: "It is true that we are the ones who will when we will, but He is the
one to make us will the good." It is God, he says, adding, "The steps of man
will be directed by the Lord, and man will want to follow his way" (De gratia et
libero arbitrio, 16, 32).
Hence to you, illustrious gentlemen and ladies, is the task
to build the earthly city in the due autonomy and respect of those human and
spiritual principles to which every individual citizen is called to adhere with
all the responsibility of his own personal conscience and, at the same time, the
duty to continue to operate actively to build a community founded on shared
values.
Most serene captains regent illustrious authorities of the
Republic of San Marino, I express from my heart that your whole community, in
the shared civil values and with their specific cultural and religious
peculiarities, will be able to write a new and noble page of history and become
ever more a land in which solidarity and peace prosper. With these sentiments I
entrust this beloved people to the maternal intercession of Our Lady of Graces
and I invoke from my heart on all and each one the apostolic blessing.
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Pope's Address to Youth of San Marino-Montefeltro
"In the Risen Lord We Have the Certainty of Our Hope"
PENNABILLI, Italy, JUNE 20, 2011 - Here is a translation of the address Benedict
XVI gave during an encounter with the youth of the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro,
held Sunday in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele of Pennabilli.
* * *
Dear Young People!
I am very happy to be among and with you today. I feel all the joy and
enthusiasm that characterizes your age. I greet and thank your Bishop Luigi
Negri for his cordial words of welcome, and to your friend who made himself the
interpreter of the thoughts and sentiments of you all, and who has formulated
some very serious and important questions. I hope that in the course of this
exposition of mine you will also find elements to obtain answers to these
questions. I greet affectionately the priests, the nuns, the animators who share
with you the path of faith and friendship; and, of course, also your parents,
who rejoice in seeing you grow strong in goodness.
Our meeting here in Pennabilli, before this cathedral, heart of the diocese, and
in this square, takes us in thought to the numerous and diverse meetings of
Jesus that the Gospels narrate to us. Today I would like to recall the famous
episode in which the Lord was on his way and one -- a youth -- ran to meet him
and, kneeling, posed this question: "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit
eternal life?" (Mark 10:17). Perhaps we would not say it like that today, but
the sense of the question is precisely: What must I do, how must I live to
really live, to find life?
Thus, in this question we can see contained the wide and varied human
experience, which opens in search of the meaning and of the profound sense of
life: How to live? Why live? In fact, the "eternal life" to which that youth of
the Gospel makes reference does not only indicate life after death, he does not
want to know only how to reach heaven. He wants to know how he must live now so
that he can have eternal life. Hence, with this question the young man shows his
need to have meaning, plenitude and truth as a part of his daily existence.
Man cannot live without this search for the truth about himself -- who he is and
why he should live -- truth that pushes to open the horizon and go beyond the
material, not to flee from reality, but to live it in a more truthful way,
richer in meaning and hope, and not just in superficiality. And I think that
this -- and I have seen and heard it in the words of your friend -- is also your
experience. The great questions we have within us are always there, they are
always reborn: Who are we? Where do we come from? What are we living for?
And these questions are the highest sign of the transcendence of the human being
and of our capacity not to stay on the surface of things. And it is precisely by
looking at ourselves with truth, with sincerity and with courage that we intuit
not only beauty, but also the precariousness of life, and we feel
dissatisfaction, a restlessness that nothing concrete is able to assuage. In the
end, all promises often show themselves to be insufficient.
Dear friends, I invite you to be aware of this healthy and positive
restlessness, not to fear asking yourselves the fundamental questions about the
meaning and value of life. Do not be content with partial, immediate answers,
certainly easier at the moment and more comfortable, which can give a moment of
happiness, of exaltation, of inebriation, but which do not give the true joy of
living, the one born for the one who builds -- as Jesus says -- not on sand but
on solid rock. Learn therefore to reflect, to read not superficially but in
profundity your human experience: you will discover with surprise and joy, that
your heart is a window open to the infinite!
This is man's grandeur and also his difficulty. One of the illusions produced in
the course of history is that of thinking that technical-scientific progress, in
an absolute way, can give answers and solutions to all of humanity's problems.
And we see that it is not like this. In reality, even if it had been possible,
nothing and no one would have been able to erase the most profound questions on
the meaning of life and of death, on the meaning of suffering, of everything,
because these questions are inscribed in the human soul, in our heart, and they
surpass the sphere of necessities. Man, also in the era of scientific and
technological progress -- which has given us so much -- continues to be a being
who desires more, more than comfort and well-being, he continues to be a being
open to the whole truth of existence, who cannot stay with material things, but
who opens to a much wider horizon.
All this you experience continually every time you ask yourselves: But why? When
you contemplate a sunset, or when music moves your heart and mind; when you
experience what it means to really love; when you feel strongly the sense of
justice and truth, and when you also feel the lack of justice, of truth and of
happiness.
Dear young people, human experience is a reality that unites us all, but to the
latter several levels of meaning can be given. And it is here where one decides
in what way to orient one's life and one chooses to whom to entrust it, to whom
one will entrust oneself. The risk is always to remain prisoners in the world of
things, of the immediate, of the relative, of the useful, losing the sensibility
for what concerns our spiritual dimension. It is not at all about being
contemptuous of the use of reason or of rejecting scientific progress. On the
contrary, it is, rather, to understand that each one of us is not made only of
an "horizontal" dimension, but also includes a "vertical" dimension. Scientific
data and technological instruments cannot replace the world of life, the
horizons of meaning and of liberty, the richness of relationships of friendship
and love.
Dear young people, it is precisely in openness to the whole truth of ourselves
and of the world where we perceive God's initiative toward us. He comes to meet
every man and makes him know the mystery of his love. In the Lord Jesus, who
died for us and has given us the Holy Spirit, we have also been made
participants in the very life of God; we belong to the family of God. In Him, in
Christ, you can find the answers to the questions that accompany your path, not
in a superficial, easy way but walking with Jesus, living with Jesus. The
encounter with Christ is not resolved in adherence to a doctrine, to a
philosophy, but what He proposes to you is to share his very life, and thus
learn to live, to learn what man is, what I am. To that youth, who asked him
what he had to do to enter eternal life, namely, to really live, Jesus responds,
inviting him to separate himself from his goods and adds, "Come, follow me"
(Mark 10:21).
The word of Christ shows that our life finds meaning in the mystery of God, who
is Love: an exacting, profound Love that goes beyond superficiality. What would
become of your life without that love? God looks after man from creation to the
end of time, when he will bring his plan of salvation to fulfillment. In the
Risen Lord we have the certainty of our hope. Christ himself, who descended to
the depths of death and is resurrected, is hope in person, is the definitive
Word pronounced on our history, He is a positive word.
Do not fear to address difficult situations, moments of crisis, the trials of
life, because the Lord accompanies you, he is with you. I encourage you to grow
in friendship with Him through frequent reading of the Gospel and of the whole
of Sacred Scripture, faithful participation in the Eucharist as personal
encounter with Christ, commitment within the ecclesial community, your path with
a valid spiritual guide. Transformed by the Holy Spirit you will be able to
experience genuine liberty, which is so when it is oriented to the good. In this
way your life, animated by a continual search for the Lord's face and by the
sincere will to give yourselves, will be for many of your contemporaries a sign,
an eloquent call to make the desire for plenitude that is in all of us be
finally realized in the encounter with the Lord Jesus. Let the mystery of Christ
illumine your whole person!
Then you will be able to bring to different environments that novelty that can
change relations, institutions, structures to build a more just and solidaristic
world, animated by the quest for the common good. Do not yield to individualist
and egoistic logics. May you be comforted by the testimony of so many young
people who have attained the end of sanctity: think of Therese of the Child
Jesus, Saint Dominic Savio, Saint Maria Goretti, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati,
Blessed Albert Marvelli -- who is of this land -- and so many others, unknown to
us, but who lived their time in the light and strength of the Gospel and who
found the answer: how to live, what I must do to live.
As conclusion to this meeting, I wish to entrust each one of you to the Virgin
Mary, Mother of the Church. Like her, may you be able to pronounce and renew
your "yes" and always proclaim the greatness of the Lord with your life, because
He gives you words of eternal life. Therefore, I encourage you dear ones, in
your path of faith and Christian life. I am also always close to you and
accompany you with my Blessing. Thank you for your attention!
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