ADDRESS OF PAUL VI
TO THE AMBASSADOR OF PARAGUAY TO THE HOLY SEE*

Thursday, 18 December 1975

Mr. Ambassador,

We listened attentively to the respectful expressions that Your Excellency has just spoken, in this solemn act of presenting your Letters of Credence, as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Paraguay to the Holy See. With our gratitude we also give you our hearty welcome.

Your words enabled us once more, to our great satisfaction, to hear the echoes of how devotion to the Holy See is lived among Paraguayans: a faithful and sincere devotion, manifest in its turn in the natural faithful acceptance that is aroused in spirits by our appeals and initiatives to bring about the longed-for peace among men and nations, which is one of the fundamental aims of our Pontificate.

We do not doubt that the Government of Paraguay, which Your Excellency represents, has understood these sentiments of the Paraguayan spirit as a noble expansion, and a fruitful and inspiring one, of its own cultural and moral patrimony. The continual, intense – and disinterested work of the Church – has, in fact, played a significant role in the formation of this patrimony and in its subsequent consolidation in the conscience of persons and of society itself.

We can assure you, Mr. Ambassador, that the Paraguayan people will never lack this animating presence of the Church, instilling the illuminating view of faith, which manifests the divine plan over man's whole vocation (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 11).

This causes us to foster the hope that our sons in Paraguay, guided by this same faith, will not cease in their resolutions to take an active part in the construction of a society in which the human person car reach fulfilment in keeping with his dignity and in which the values of Christian society and brotherhood can bear abundant fruit.

Mr. Ambassador, wishing you fruitful and successful results in the high mission you are beginning today, we request you to transmit to the President of your country our sincere gratitude for his greeting and good wishes, while we invoke upon all our beloved sons of Paraguay abundant divine blessings.