Vatican City (Fides Service) - " Once again this year I am happy to welcome you who take part in the activities of Christian formation promoted by the Opus Dei Prelature in many different countries. You have come to Rome for Holy Week and to participate in the UNIV 2003 international meeting. I hope these days in Rome will be a time for a new encounter with Jesus and a powerful experience of the Church". With these words Pope John Paul II greeted some 2,500 students taking part in the International UNIV 2003 Meeting organised by the Institute for University Cooperation ICU which every year brings young people to Rome from many different countries. The students taking part this year come from 252 universities all over the world.
"For your University Congress you have chosen the theme: "Building peace in the 21st Century" - the Holy Father underlined-. This theme is more than ever timely in these months in which we are preoccupied not only by the situation in Iraq but also the many pockets of violence and war burning on other continents. This renders all the more urgent authentic education to peace. For believers the first and fundamental way to promote peace is prayer, since peace is a gift of God's love".
Lastly the Pope recalled the four pillars of peace indicated by Blessed John XXIII in his Pacem in Terris encyclical, exhorting the young people present to be authentic peace-makers: "Have the courage to ask yourself honest questions about the meaning of life; forge yourselves in a limpid uprightness of thought and action, respect and dialogue with others. In the first place may you have that authentic relationship with God that demands personal conversion and opening to his mystery. Man understands himself only in relation to God who is the fullness of truth, beauty and goodness.
In her address to the Holy Father, the President of UNIV 2003, Angelika Hagsbacher from Germany, who has a degree in engineering, thanked the Pope for the confidence he has in young people: "Thank you for your example and for your confidence in young people! You often remind us that the future is in our hands and that to build peace we must be people who are animated with profound trust in God and in the greatness of the vocation of the human person". Referring to the Congress theme, Angelika said to the Pope: "We have come to realise that peace is not a remedy which can be applied from the outside, something which can be imposed, it is the fruit of a life directed by the truth. We want to have clear intelligence and a pure heart so we can always search for the truth, be struck by its beauty and be able to spread it around us". See whole text in Italian at www.fides.org SL (Fides Service 15/4/2003 EM lines 37 Words: 503)