Index   Back Top Print

[ EN  - ES  - FR  - IT ]

APOSTOLIC PILGRIMAGE
OF HIS HOLINESS PAUL VI
TO WEST ASIA, OCEANIA AND AUSTRALIA

ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER PAUL VI
TO THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS
*

Sydney, Australia
Tuesday, 1 December 1970

 

Gentlemen,

The opportunity to meet you is always one of the pleasures of our journeys round the world. There comes before our eyes in one moment of time almost the entire earth, in the persons of its specially chosen representatives. To yourselves and to your peoples we offer our respectful greetings and our best wishes for your prosperity.

Our stay in Australia is already drawing to a close. We are truly glad that we have made this long journey to fulfil better the apostolic charge by which we are entrusted with the care of all the churches. Here, as also the other day in Manila, we have studied together with the bishops, in a spirit of communion and shared responsibility, seeking together how to bring the eternal word of God to the men of today. The aim of this journey is a spiritual one, but it is with joy that we also make contact with Governments and local Authorities in order both to assure them of our sincere devotedness and to express our heartfelt thanks for their cordial hospitality. From these contacts we draw great encouragement for pursuing our mission of service to men, and for repeating our appeal to all believers: that, urged on by the driving force of their faith, they should work in brotherly collaboration with all men of goodwill, for the renewal of the temporal order (cf. Apostolicam Actuositatem, No. 5),

Your mission, Gentlemen, in many ways resembles ours. You work for the cause of international order and the peaceful progress of peoples, as you dedicate yourselves in this concerted general effort – so needed in today’s world – to create the conditions for a just peace and to lay the foundations for a united society which the rich will help the poor and the strong will sustain the weak.

We ask God to assist you in this work, so important and so charged with responsibility; we pray that in spite of delays and the temptation to impatience men may come to realize more and more that they are brothers and the sons of the same Father who is in heaven. With this wish, we invoke upon you and upon your countries an abundance of divine blessings.


*ORa n.50 p.14.

 



Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana