POPE ADDRESSES SIXTH PUBLIC SESSION OF PONTIFICAL ACADEMIES

VATICAN CITY, NOV 8, 2001 (VIS) - Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Council of Coordination between the Pontifical Academies, presided this morning in the Vatican over the sixth public session, whose theme was "Cultural dimensions of globalization: a challenge to Christian humanism."

Participating in the session were members of the Pontifical Academies of St. Thomas Aquinas, of Theology and of Mary Immaculate, as well as the International Marian Pontifical Academy, the Pontifical Academy of Arts and Letters of the Virtuosos of the Pantheon, the Roman Pontifical Academy of Archeology and the Pontifical Academy "Cultorum Martyrum."

After speeches by Fr. Abelardo Lobato, president of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas, and by Sr. Marcella Farina, president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, the Pope pronounced a discourse.

The Holy Father affirmed that "One has the impression that the complex dynamisms, aroused by the globalization of the economy and the means of communications, aim to progressively reduce man to a market variable, to a good of exchange, to a factor which is completely irrelevant in the most decisive choices. In this way man risks feeling crushed by faceless mechanisms of worldwide dimensions and increasingly losing his identity and his dignity as person.

"As a consequence of these dynamisms," he continued, "cultures as well, if not welcomed and respected in their own originality and richness, but adapted forcibly to the needs of the market and to trends, can run the risk of becoming homologized. The result is a cultural product characterized by a superficial syncretism, in which new measures of value are imposed, derived from often arbitrary, materialistic and consumerist criteria and resistant to any openness to the Transcendent."

The Pope emphasized that "this great challenge ... demands an attentive and profound intellectual and theological discernment of the anthropological-cultural paradigm produced by these great changes. In this context the Pontifical Academies can offer a precious contribution, orienting the cultural choices of the Christian communities and of all of society and proposing occasions and instruments of encounter between faith and culture, between revelation and human problems."

At the end of the session John Paul II awarded the annual prize of the Pontifical Academies, which is given to young scholars who have contributed with their theological, philosophical, historical, or artistic work to the promotion of Christian humanism. This year the award was given to Pia Francesca de Solenni for her work in Thomistic theology entitled: "A Hermeneutic of Aquinas' Mens through a Sexually Differentiated Epistemology. Towards an Understanding of Woman as 'Imago Dei'," presented at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. At the same time, he presented a medal of his pontificate to Johannes Nebel, a recent graduate and a member of "The Family of Consecrated Life," for his thesis presented at the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm in Rome.

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