During the celebration of yesterday, we only could address a brief greeting to you. Today we want to show you the joy, the emotion and the honour that your participation in the inauguration of our Pontificate has provided us. We are a debtor of enormous gratitude to you, to you personally, in the first place, and to the international countries or Organizations that you represent.
Peter and his successors
This tribute of so many nations is very beautiful and encouraging. It is not that our person has deserved it: yesterday, we were only a Priest and a Bishop in a province of Italy, given with all his energies and talents to the apostolate that had trusted to him. And here, today, we have been called to Apostle Peter' s See. We are heir of his great universal mission, he received by pure grace from Our Lord Jesus Christ ' s hands, who is, according to the Christian faith, Son of God and Saviour of the world. We frequently thought about this phrase of the Apostle Paul: 'We take this treasure in mud glasses, so that the excellence of the power is God' s and it does not seem ours' (2 Cor. 4, 7). Happily, we are not alone either: we act in communion with Bishops of the Catholic Church, that is spread everywhere.
So, then, it is a joy for us the fact that your tribute goes beyond the benevolence given to our person, and it becomes, before our eyes, a sign of continuous attraction and fascination that the Gospel and the things of God exert in our universe; and it also shows the esteem and confidence of almost all the people towards the Church and the Holy See, towards its many activities, as much in the properly spiritual area as in the service to justice, to the development and peace. It is necessary to add that the action of the last Popes, mainly of our venerated Predecessor, Paul VI, has contributed enormously to this international irradiation.
Children of God' s rights and liberties
Regarding us and according to our possibilities, we are willing to continue this disinterested work and to support our collaborators who work in it. Although we do not know all your countries in person, and unfortunately we cannot speak to each one in your native language, our heart is totally open to all the people and to all the races, with the desire that each one can find a position in the concert of the nations and can develop the gifts that God has given them, in peace, thanks to the understanding and the solidarity of others. Nothing of which it is really human will be outside of us. It is true we do not have miraculous solutions for the big world-wide problems. But we can contribute with something very precious: a spirit who helps to resolve these problems and locates them in an approach which is essential: that one of the universal charity and that one of the opening to important values, that means, the opening to God. We will try to fulfil this service with simple, clear and trusted language.
We also want to count on your benevolent collaboration. In first place, we wish Christian communities always enjoy, in your countries, of respect and freedom to which every religious conscience has the right, and I know a right place to their collaboration by building the common good. We also are sure you will continue welcoming favourably the initiatives of the Holy See, when this one has the purpose of serving the international community, of remembering the exigencies of a healthy life in society, of defending the rights and the dignity of all men, specially of the small ones and minorities.
Thanks again for your visit. From all our heart, we invoked God' s help on you, on your families and on all and every of your countries and on the world-wide Organizations you represent. May God keep lucid our spirits and our hearts in peace, in the fulfilment of our big responsibilities.
