ADDRESS OF PAUL VI
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE INDONESIAN COMMUNITY

Saturday, 26 June 1971

Your Excellency, dear friends,

The occasion is a very happy one for us this morning. We are pleased to receive distinguished members of the Indonesian community, including the staff of the Embassy to the Holy See and a number of Our own Catholic Indonesian sons and daughters, resident in Rome.

To all of you Our word is one of welcome and good wishes, of blessing and friendship.

We are sincerely glad to have you as Our own guests this morning. We recall with pleasure the varied experiences of Our stay among you. We think of the many encounters We had in your beloved land : meetings with your President and government, meetings with leaders of the venerable religions of Indonesia, meetings with hundreds of your fellow-citizens. We remember particularly Our meeting with Our own Catholics. With special joy We recall the evening Mass and the impressive ceremony wherein the light of one candle was multiplied to become the source of illumination to the entire stadium. These are just some of the memories of Our stay among you.

What We would wish to do today is to express Our affection for you and your people, and tell you once more of Our appreciation of your dynamism and desire for progress and of Our respect for your spiritual traditions (Cfr. Address to the President and Authorities of Indonesia, 3 December 1970; AAS 63, 1971, pp. 75-76).

To those of you who make up the Catholic Indonesian community of Rome We express the hope that your stay here will be beneficial. We hope also that from the shrines of Rome you will take back to your country an authentic interpretation of Christianity, to be lived in turn by your people in the great culture which is their own. For all the Catholics and Christians of your land We would express the prayer that Christ may live in their hearts through faith (Cfr. Eph. 3, 17). Through you today We send Our greetings to your country, and upon all the people of Indonesia We invoke the choicest blessings of the Almighty.