ARCHBISHOP MARTINO OPENS CONGRESS OF NATIONAL RECONCILIATION

VATICAN CITY, MAY 5, 2003 (VIS) - In Bogota, Colombia, at 11 this morning, local time, Archbishop Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, will inaugurate the Second Congress of National Reconciliation on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Blessed John XXIII's Encyclical "Pacem In terris."

According to a communique released this morning by the pontifical council, the May 5-7 congress "was promoted by the national secretariat for the social pastoral ministry in this Latin American country which has been bloodied by an ancient social conflict. ... The scope of this meeting is to look for strategies for building a new country which considers not only the scenarios of the political conflict, but also possibilities of a post-conflict, the situation of the victims of armed clashes, social exclusion, impoverishment and the injustices of the new economic and political order."

Archbishop Martino will be in Medellin on May 8 and 9 to visit the social works of the archdiocese and to address the professors and students of the Pontifical Bolivarian University on the teaching and applicability of the Church's social doctrine in the world of globalization.

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