ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
AT THE PRESENTATION OF THE LETTERS
ACCREDITING NEW AMBASSADORS TO THE HOLY SEE*

Thursday, 16 June 2005

Your Excellencies,

I am pleased to welcome you for the presentation of the Letters accrediting you as Ambassadors of your respective countries: Azerbaijan, Guinea, Malta, New Zealand, Rwanda, Switzerland and Zimbabwe. I ask you to thank your Heads of State for their courteous messages and to convey my greetings and esteem to them.

Through you, I would like to offer a fraternal greeting to all the Peoples whom you represent and to whom I would like to express my warmest, most fervent good wishes, repeating to all the men and women of all your Countries that I am close to them and that I am praying for them. I ask them to commit themselves to creating a humanity that is more and more brotherly with renewed attention to all, especially to the poorest and those marginalized by society.

In this regard, our world is facing numerous challenges that it must successfully confront so that the human person may always triumph over technology. A just future for peoples must be the primary concern of those who have undertaken to manage public affairs, not in their own interest but with a view to the common good. Our heart cannot be at peace while we see our brothers and sisters suffering from lack of food, work, a home or the other fundamental goods.

To make a concrete response to the appeal of our brothers and sisters in humanity, we must come to grips with the first of these challenges: solidarity among generations, solidarity between countries and entire continents, so that all human beings may share more equitably in the riches of our planet. This is one of the essential services that people of good will must render to humanity. The earth, in fact, can produce enough to nourish all its inhabitants, on the condition that the rich countries do not keep for themselves what belongs to all.

The Church will never tire of reminding everyone that they must take pains to create a human brotherhood that consists of concrete gestures on the part of individuals and of Governments and international Institutions.

For her part, having made sharing the heart of her life since apostolic times, the Church will continue on all the continents to go to the aid of their populations with the support of the local communities and of all people of good will, especially in the areas of education, health care and the basic goods. I know that as diplomats, you are particularly sensitive to this aspect of life in society and that diplomacy has an important role to play.

At the time when you are beginning your mission to the Apostolic See, I offer you my very best wishes and invoke an abundance of divine Blessings upon you yourselves as well as upon your families, your co-workers and upon the Nations you represent.

*L'Osservatore Romano. Weekly Edition in English n. 25 p. 3.

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