ANGELUS: POPE JOHN PAUL II UPHOLDS "DOMINUS IESUS"

VATICAN CITY, OCT 1, 2000 (VIS) - Following today's Mass and canonization ceremony, and before reciting the angelus with the nearly 100,000 faithful gathered in a rain-soaked St. Peter's Square, John Paul II reaffirmed the recently published Declaration "Dominus Iesus."

"At the summit of the Jubilee Year," he began, "with the Declaration 'Dominus Iesus' - Jesus is the Lord - approved by me in a special form, I desired to invite all Christians to renew their fidelity to Christ in the joy of faith, witnessing unanimously that He is, even today and tomorrow, 'the Way, the Truth and the Life'. Our confession of Christ as the Only Son, through Whom we ourselves see the face of the Father, is not arrogance which disdains other religions, rather it is a joyous recognition that Christ showed Himself to us without any merit on our part. And He, at the same time, has committed us to continue to give what we have received and to communicate to others what we were given, so that the gift of Truth and the Love which is God might belong to all men.

"With the Apostle Peter," he went on, "we confess that 'in no other name is there salvation'. The Declaration 'Dominus Iesus', in the wake of Vatican Council II, shows that this does not mean that salvation is denied to non-Christians, but that its ultimate source is Christ in Whom God and man are united. God gives light to everyone in a way that is appropriate to their interior situation and their environment, giving them salvific grace through ways known to Him. The document clarifies the basic Christian elements, which do not hinder dialogue, but point out its foundations, because a dialogue without foundations would be destined to degenerate into empty verbosity.

"The same is true for the ecumenical question. If the document, with Vatican II, declares that 'the one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church', this does not mean to express little consideration for other Churches and ecclesial communities. This conviction is accompanied by the awareness that this is not human merit, but a sign of God's fidelity, which is stronger than human weaknesses and sins, confessed by us in a solemn manner before God and men at the start of Lent. The Catholic Church suffers - as the document says - for the fact that true particular Churches and ecclesial communities with precious elements of salvation are separated from her.

"The document thus expresses once again the same ecumenical passion which is at the core of my Encyclical 'Ut Unum Sint'. It is my hope that this Declaration which means so much to me, after so many wrong interpretations, can finally assume its function of clarifying and, at the same time, of openness. May Mary, to whom the Lord on the Cross entrusted us as our Mother, help us to grow together in faith in Christ, the Redeemer of all men, in the hope of salvation, offered by Christ to everyone, and in love, which is the sign of the children of God."

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