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Pope Benedict XVI- Addresses |
Pope's Address Upon Arriving to Portugal
"I Come As a Pilgrim to Our Lady of
Fatima"
Portugal's
Portela Airport
May 11, 2010
Mr President,
Distinguished Authorities,
Dear Brother Bishops,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Only now has it been possible for me to
accept the kind invitations of the
President and my Brother Bishops to
visit this beloved and ancient Nation,
which this year is celebrating the
centenary of the proclamation of the
Republic. As I set foot on Portuguese
soil for the first time since Divine
Providence called me to the See of
Peter, I feel greatly honoured and I am
moved to gratitude by the respectful and
hospitable presence of all of you. I
thank you, Mr President, for your kind
words of welcome, giving voice to the
sentiments and the hopes of the beloved
Portuguese people. To all, whatever
their faith or religion, I extend a
greeting in friendship, especially to
those who were unable to be here to meet
me. I come as a pilgrim to Our Lady of
Fatima, having received from on high the
mission to strengthen my brothers as
they advance along their pilgrim journey
to heaven.
Since the earliest days of their
nationhood, the Portuguese people have
looked to the Successor of Peter for
recognition of their existence as a
Nation; in due course, one of my
predecessors was to honour Portugal, in
the person of its King, with the title
"most faithful" (cf. Pius II, Bull Dum
Tuam, 25 January 1460), for long and
distinguished service to the cause of
the Gospel. As for the event that took
place 93 years ago, when heaven itself
was opened over Portugal -- like a
window of hope that God opens when man
closes the door to him -- in order to
refashion, within the human family, the
bonds of fraternal solidarity based on
the mutual recognition of the one
Father, this was a loving design from
God; it does not depend on the Pope, nor
on any other ecclesial authority: "It
was not the Church that imposed Fatima",
as Cardinal Manuel Cerejeira of blessed
memory used to say, "but it was Fatima
that imposed itself on the Church."
The Virgin Mary came from heaven to
remind us of Gospel truths that
constitute for humanity -- so lacking in
love and without hope for salvation --
the source of hope. To be sure, this
hope has as its primary and radical
dimension not the horizontal relation,
but the vertical and transcendental one.
The relationship with God is
constitutive of the human being, who was
created and ordered towards God; he
seeks truth by means of his cognitive
processes, he tends towards the good in
the sphere of volition, and he is
attracted by beauty in the aesthetic
dimension. Consciousness is Christian to
the degree to which it opens itself to
the fullness of life and wisdom that we
find in Jesus Christ. The visit that I
am now beginning under the sign of hope
is intended as a proposal of wisdom and
mission.
From a wise vision of life and of the
world, the just ordering of society
follows. Situated within history, the
Church is open to cooperating with
anyone who does not marginalize or
reduce to the private sphere the
essential consideration of the human
meaning of life. The point at issue is
not an ethical confrontation between a
secular and a religious system, so much
as a question about the meaning that we
give to our freedom. What matters is the
value attributed to the problem of
meaning and its implication in public
life. By separating Church and State,
the Republican revolution which took
place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened
up a new area of freedom for the Church,
to which the two concordats of 1940 and
2004 would give shape, in cultural
settings and ecclesial perspectives
profoundly marked by rapid change. For
the most part, the sufferings caused by
these transformations have been faced
with courage. Living amid a plurality of
value systems and ethical outlooks
requires a journey to the core of one’s
being and to the nucleus of Christianity
so as to reinforce the quality of one’s
witness to the point of sanctity, and to
find mission paths that lead even to the
radical choice of martyrdom.
Dear Portuguese brothers and sisters, my
friends, I thank you once more for your
cordial welcome. May God bless those who
are here and all the inhabitants of this
noble and beloved Nation, which I
entrust to Our Lady of Fatima, the
sublime image of God’s love embracing
all as children.
© Copyright 2010 -- Libreria Editrice
Vaticana
[Translation by ZENIT]
Look
at the One they Pierced!
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
