POPE WELCOMES OFFICIALS OF ITALY'S LAZIO REGION

VATICAN CITY, JAN 16, 1999 (VIS) - Members of the Junta and Council of the region of Lazio were welcomed by the Holy Father this morning during what has become an annual meeting for the exchange of best wishes in the New Year.

The Pope told them that their region, "with it meritorious institutions, its singular human and Christian patrimony, the lights and shadows of daily realities, will shortly be called ... to face an extraordinary event, the Great Jubilee of the year 2000." Calling the Jubilee "a spiritual event which primarily concerns the lives of believers," he stated that "Christ's birth, however, had relevance for all of mankind. ... The Jubilee will thus go beyond Church confines, involving in some way even society and civil institutions."

"Biblical tradition," John Paul II went on, "presents the Jubilee as a time of the reestablishment of justice between God and men. This is an aspect of a Jubilee to which public administrators cannot remain insensitive. It is up to them to see to the realization of the citizens' hopes for justice and solidarity."

In closing remarks, the Pope highlighted the obligations of public servants, in particular in the "search for a peace which is born of the refusal of privileges, and of respect of the rights of everyone, above all of the weak and marginalized."

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