LETTERS OF CREDENCE OF NEW AMBASSADOR FROM DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

VATICAN CITY, DEC 11, 2000 (VIS) - This morning, the Holy Father received the Letters of Credence of Victor A. Hidalgo Justo, the new ambassador from the Dominican Republic. The Pope recalled that, following the route of the first evangelizers, the Dominican Republic "was the first American land to welcome me at the start of my pontificate."

The Pope said that "the points in which the Church and States meet and collaborate ... concern those fields that determine full human dignity and that cultivate the values upon which an ever more just, unified and peaceful world must be built. At the present moment in history - in which many factors motivate (people) to think only in terms of immediate results, producing apprehension in people and instability in society - it is supremely important to be ever more watchful in order not to lose the most authentic and deeply-rooted values of human nature."

The Church, he added, asks everyone that society "not become, through misleading ideas, a threat" to human life. "The inviolability of human life, in the different phases of development or in whatever situation it may be, is the premise for all other human rights and represents a limit to human authority and a foundation for a responsible and tireless search for peace."

"The Church in the Dominican Republic," he concluded, "has not ceased to concern herself with the good of her people and the human progress of the country. She does so through her educational, cultural and aid institutions but, above all, by infusing a spirit of Christian hope and social commitment so that everyone may feel a responsibility in the construction of a better future."

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