VATICAN - “THE TRAGIC EVENTS WHICH AFFLICT THE MODERN WORLD AND THE DEPLORABLE CONDITIONS OF UNDER-DEVELOPMENT REVEAL THE PERMANENT VALIDITY OF THE CHURCH’S SOCIAL TEACHING” PAPAL MESSAGE TO CENTESIMUS ANNUS PRO PONTEFICE FOUNDATION:

Monday, 7 July 2003

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Vatican City (Fides Service) – Pope John Paul II sent a message to mark the tenth anniversary of foundation of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontefice Foundation set up to promote and diffuse knowledge and implementation of the Social Teaching of the Church as well as to support the Pope’s charitable work.
In his message the Pope writes: “These past ten years have seen the consolidation of the Foundation, the development of study and formation, the articulation of groups of members in Italy and the start, rich in prospects, of connected presence in other countries” and he congratulates the Foundation for its intense activity, encouraging its members to continue in this direction keeping in mind three fundamental considerations:
a) The permanent validity of the Church’s social teaching. “The tragic events afflicting the modern world and the deplorable conditions of under development in too many countries with terrible consequences for the people, the fragile institutions and for the natural environment, tell us that it is truly necessary to start out again from the right perspective: the truth about man as it is discovered by reason and confirmed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ who proclaims and promotes the authentic dignity and innate social vocation of the person.”
b) The responsibility proper to the laity. “This responsibility finds precisely in the social teaching of the Church a necessary, fecund and inspiring point of reference. The Council speaks of a (Gaudium et spes 42). This task is proper and peculiar to the lay faithful, called to invest with the light that comes from the Gospel the different social realities and, with the power infused by Christ, work to ‘humanise’ the world. This is truly a great responsibility, which should be lived by lay Christians not as a restricting duty but rather as a generous and creative passion”.
c) The awareness that only new people can make all things new. “We cannot demand of the economy, politics, social institutions that which they are unable to give. Anything authentically new is born of the heart, of a redeemed conscience, illuminated and qualified for authentic freedom through the living encounter with the One who said: (Jn 14,6) and (Jn 15,5). Social involvement of Christians can therefore be nourished and rendered coherent, tenacious and courageous only by profound spirituality, that is a life of intimate union with Jesus which renders them able to express the great theological virtues – faith hope and charity through the exercise of the difficult responsibility to build a society less remote from the great and providential plan of God”.
SL (Fides Service 7/7/2003 EM lines 33 Words: 467)

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