SPORT CAN ALSO CONTRIBUTE TO BUILDING PEACE

VATICAN CITY, MAY 26, 2000 (VIS) - The Pope sent a message to participants in last evening's "Match of the Heart," a football game in Rome's Olympic Stadium in which a team of Israeli and Palestinian artists played against a team of Italian singers. Present at the match were Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Naational Authority, and Shimon Peres, Israeli minister for Development and Regional Policies.

"I express my appreciation," writes the Holy Father, "for this exceptional initiative that aims to consolidate the culture of acceptance and dialogue between Italian, Israeli and Palestinian peoples."

John Paul II affirms: "Sport too, a vehicle of human and moral stimuli and values, can assist towards making the world more fraternal and united in solidarity. May this 'match of the heart' encourage you, dear friends from different nations and cultures, to know one another better and to progress along the path of mutual respect and reciprocal esteem. May solidarity and peace be above all the winners in this heartwarming competition. From the Olympic Stadium, may your message of hope be transmitted: Sport too can contribute to building peace."

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PRESENTATION OF EXHIBITION ON STS. PETER AND PAUL

VATICAN CITY, MAY 26, 2000 (VIS) - In the Holy See Press Office at midday today, the exhibition "Peter and Paul, History, Worship, Memory in the First Centuries" was presented. The exhibition may be visited in Rome's chancellory building from June 30 to December 10.

Archbishop Crescenzio Sepe, secretary general of the Central Committee for the Great Jubilee, indicated that the exhibition has been organized by the "Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples" association of Rimini, Italy, in close collaboration with the Pontifical Monuments, Museums and Galleries. He added that it has been promoted by the Pontifical Council for the Laity for the occasion of World Youth Day, which will be held in August at Tor Vergata on the outskirts of Rome.

Archbishop Sepe said "Peter and Paul: this is the very heart of the significance and justification of the pilgrimage to Rome, the key element of the whole Jubilee, this is what the exhibition proposes and the goal at which it is aimed."

Bishop Stanislaw Rylko, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, said that the exhibition "lies in the context of the series of exhibitions on Christian art, on archeology and on Church history, promoted by our dicastery over the last few years on the occasion of World Youth Days." Furthermore, he added, "the common denominator in these exhibitions is the figure of Peter and his ministry in the Church. These two elements always shine forth in all their splendor whenever young people gather around the Pope."

For his part, Fabrizio Bisconti, secretary of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archeology, affirmed that the two apostles, Peter and Paul, are considered "in the dynamics of their evangelization, in their thought, in their arrival in Rome, in their death and in the unstoppable and unsuppressible worship that extended from their tombs over the entire city and from there over the whole 'Orbis Christianus Antiquus'."

Referring to the contents of the exhibition, Bisconti indicated that the first section contains lamps, plaques, stained glass and sarcophagi from the Jewish catacombs in Rome, while the second section houses a number of historic sarcophagi. The following two sections "develop, respectively, the themes of the history and iconography of the Princes of the Apostles, also giving consideration to episodes handed down in the apocryphal gospels, such as the miracle of the fountain and the arrest of Peter." The final section deals with the theme of worship "and contains material found near the tomb of Peter, portraits of the apostle and of Pope Siricius from the Leonine Basilica of St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls, and carved and mosaic inscriptions that recall the cult of the two martyrs par excellence."

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ROLE OF CULTURAL PATRIMONY IN PROMOTING HUMANISM, PEACE

VATICAN CITY, MAY 26, 2000 (VIS) - Fifty members of the International Union of the Institutes of Archeology, History and Art History in Rome were greeted today by the Pope who underlined their mission of "serving history and art by developing the numerous witnesses that Rome possesses of western civilization, of Christian culture and of the life of the Church."

He observed that they have "placed at the disposition of researchers and students a bibliographic data bank, set up under the auspices of the Roman Union of Scientific Libraries, in relation with the Vatican Apostolic Library. I am pleased about this remarkable work tool, as well as about the scholarships which you offer young researchers."

The Holy Father, addressing the group in French, said that "the Church knows the irreplaceable role of cultural patrimony for the promotion of an authentic humanism and lasting peace among nations. ... The spread of artistic and historic culture throughout all levels of society gives the men and women of our time the means to rediscover their roots and to draw from them the cultural and spiritual elements needed to build their personal and community life."

He remarked that "all men and all societies need a culture which opens itself to a healthy anthropological process, to moral and spiritual life. ... Art invites us to cultivate the beauty of existence, in fully living its moral exigencies, and in tirelessly searching for the truth. ... Cultural patrimony has precisely this function of opening man to the meaning of the mystery and the revelation of the absolute, for they are bearers of a message."

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HOLY FATHER WELCOMES NEW AMBASSADOR FROM GREECE

VATICAN CITY, MAY 26, 2000 (VIS) - Pope John Paul today accepted the Letters of Credence of Stelios Rocanas, the new ambassador from the Hellenic Republic. In his speech of welcome, he noted that the Holy See's diplomatic activity "is a service motivated not by any national interest, not by narrowly institutional and confessional views, but by loving concern for the common good of all peoples and nations."

"Nowadays," the Pope continued, speaking English, "diplomacy must also face the challenges presented by globalization in order to overcome threats to peace and development such as the poverty of countless human beings, social inequalities, ethnic tensions, environmental pollution and respect for human rights and political freedom."

The Holy Father declared that "efforts to address these questions will founder unless they are based upon an objective criterion of moral accountability. The effort to establish an international court of justice for crimes against humanity is one expression of the demand for such a criterion in international public opinion. Yet ironically, the call for an objective criterion of moral accountability is in many cases accompanied by the spread of a relativistic approach to truth, which effectively denies any objective criterion of good and evil.

"The root of this dilemma ... is the tendency to exalt individual autonomy at the expense of the bonds which unite us and make us responsible for each other. Society needs a coherent vision which embraces both the dignity and inalienable rights of each individual, especially the weakest and most vulnerable."

John Paul II pointed to "the new impulse towards unity on various levels" within Europe, saying that this "must be based on moral and spiritual values. ... If Europe is to be faithful to its finest traditions and aspirations, if there is to be that new unity desired by so many, then Europe must draw afresh from the deep springs of true humanism which brought those traditions and aspirations to birth."

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AUDIENCES

VATICAN CITY, MAY 26, 2000 (VIS) - The Holy Father today received in separate audiences:

- Ismael Omar Guelleh, president of the Republic of Djibouti, accompanied by his entourage.
- Archbishop Andre Dupuy, apostolic nuncio in Venezuela.
- Cardinal Edmund Casimir Szoka, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State.

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