ADDRESS OF JOHN PAUL II
TO A GROUP OF PILGRIMS FROM SRI LANKA

Thursday, 17 June 1982

Dear brothers and sisters,

You are heartly welcome. I hope that your pilgrimage will bring you many blessings. Travel is meant to broaden our horizons, to add to our experience of the world and of mankind. But a pilgrimage is meant to do even more. It should give us contact of some kind with what is more solid and lasting than this changing world. It should give us inspiration and strength for the future, and make us truly wiser and better.

May your journey be a real pilgrimage. May your visit to Rome give you something of the spirit of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the founders of the Church in this city, and assure you of their heavenly protection. May God be with you on your way, and may he show his favour to you, to your dear ones and to your country. God bless Sri Lanka.

© Copyright 1982 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana