CENTENARY OF EVANGELIZATION IN BURKINA FASO

VATICAN CITY, JAN 13, 2001 (VIS) - Made public today was a letter from the Holy Father in which he names Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, dean of the College of Cardinals, as special envoy to the closing celebrations for the centenary of evangelization in Burkina Faso. The event will take place in Ouagadougou on January 21.

Cardinal Gantin will be accompanied by Frs. Laurent Nare, director of the department for Catholic education of the diocese of Koupela; Alexandre Bazie of the diocesan clergy of Koudougou, rector of the major seminary of Koumi and Godefroy Sankara, official of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

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CARDINAL GANTIN CELEBRATES 50 YEARS AS A PRIEST

VATICAN CITY, JAN 13, 2001 (VIS) - Made public today was a message from the Pope, written in Latin and dated December 14, addressed to Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, dean of the College of Cardinals, who tomorrow will celebrate fifty years in the priesthood. The cardinal was ordained a priest on January 14, 1951, consecrated a bishop on February 3, 1957 and created a cardinal by Paul VI in 1977.

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DIPLOMACY: BRINGING TO RULE ORDER, EQUITY AND PEACE

VATICAN CITY, JAN 13, 2001 (VIS) - This morning in the Sala Regia of the Vatican, Pope John Paul received the 174 members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See for the traditional exchange of greetings in the New Year. Following a speech by their dean, Ambassador Giovanni Galassi of the Republic of San Marino, the Pope then gave an address in which he underscored the lights and shadows of world events of this past year.

Wishing the diplomats a "prosperous and happy New Year," he then asked: "What is a happy year for a diplomat? The world scene in this month of January 2001 could cause one to doubt the capacity of diplomacy to bring about the rule of order, equity and peace among peoples."

"However," he went on, "we should not resign ourselves to the inevitability of sickness, poverty, injustice or war. It is certain that without social solidarity or recourse to law and the instruments of diplomacy, these terrible situations would be even more dramatic and could become insoluble."

The Holy Father stated that "the inspiration of the Holy Year which has just ended, and of the different Jubilee events which brought together and motivated men and women of every race, age and condition, showed, if there was a need, that the moral conscience is still very much alive and that God dwells in the human heart." Recalling the Jubilee of Parliamentarians, he said "it was for me a source of great spiritual consolation to see so much good will and so much openness to God's grace."

Speaking of the light which accompanied the birth of Christ 2000 years ago, the Pope remarked that "this light tells us that the love of God is always stronger than evil and death.

"This light signals the path of all who in our times in Bethlehem and Jerusalem are struggling on the road to peace. In this part of the world which received God's revelation to man there should be no resignation before the fact that a kind of guerilla warfare has become an everyday event, or in the face of the persistence of injustice, the contempt for international law or the marginalization of the Holy Places and the requirements of the Christian communities. ... It is time to return to the principles of international legality: the banning of the acquisition of territory by force, the right of peoples to self-determination, respect for the resolutions of the United Nations Organization and the Geneva conventions, to quote only the most important."

Turning to "other regions of the planet where people have chosen armed violence in order to exact their rights or further their ambitions," John Paul II mentioned Africa, "a continent where too many weapons are circulating and where too many countries suffer from unstable democracy and devastating corruption." He cited the "drama of Algeria, ... the war in southern Sudan, ... the chaos ... of the Great Lakes region, adding, however, that "the peace agreement arrived at last month in Algiers between Ethiopia and Eritrea is a cause for satisfaction."

"Nearer to us I must mention - and with such a sense of sadness! - the murderous terrorist attacks in Spain, which sully the nation and humiliate the whole of Europe as it searches for its identity. ... May Europe never forget the Christian roots which have allowed its humanism to bear much fruit!"

The Holy Father went on to say that "the light of Bethlehem ... imposes upon us the duty of combatting always and everywhere poverty, marginalization, illiteracy, social inequalities or the shameful treatment of human beings."

"Egoism and the will to power are humanity's worst enemies" and "at the root of every conflict. This is especially evident in certain parts of South America, where socio-economic and cultural differences, armed violence or guerilla warfare, and the turning back of democratic gains damage the social fabric and cause entire populations to lose confidence in the future." The Pope said that "good will and international solidarity" can overcome such situations: "Asia has shown that this is so, with the dialogue between the two Koreas and with East Timor's progress towards independence."

"Believers - and especially Christians - know that another approach is possible. I will formulate it in words which may seem too simple: Every man is my brother!"

"When we think of the century just ended, one thing is clear: history will judge it to be the century which saw the greatest conquests of science and technology, but also as the time when human life was despised in the cruellest ways. I am certainly referring to the murderous wars which burgeoned in Europe and to the forms of totalitarianism, which enslaved millions of men and women, but I am also referring to laws which 'legalized' abortion or euthanasia, and to cultural models which have spread the idea of consumption and pleasure at any price."

"At the dawn of this millennium let us save man! Let us together, all of us, save humanity! It is up to the leaders of societies to safeguard the human race, ensuring that science is at the service of the human person, that people are never objects to be manipulated or to be bought and sold, that laws are never determined by commercial interests or by the selfish claims of minority groups."

Affirming that believers must "state publicly that no authority, no political program and no ideology is entitled to reduce human beings to what they can do or produce," the Pope stressed that "the Catholic Church is determined to defend the dignity the rights and the transcendent dimension of the human person. Even if some are reluctant to refer to the religious dimension of the human being, even if others want to consign religion to the private sphere, even if believing communities are persecuted, Christians will still proclaim that religious experience is part of human experience."
"Together," concluded Pope John Paul II, "let us help one another to live a life worthy of the vocation that is ours, the vocation of forming a great family, happy in the knowledge that it is loved by a God Who wants us to be brothers and sisters!"

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POPE GREETS ORTHODOX PRIESTS AND YOUNG PEOPLE FROM SERBIA

VATICAN CITY, JAN 14, 2001 (VIS) - The Holy Father this morning, following the angelus prayer, greeted a number of pilgrims from Spain in their language and then, in Russian, extended a cordial welcome to a group of priests and young people from the Serbian Orthodox diocese of Sabac-Valjevo in Serbia.

"May your pilgrimage," he said, "strengthen your Christian faith and support you in your commitment to build together with the other citizens of your country a future of peace and development. When you return to your country, convey my affectionate greetings to His Beatitude, Patriarch Pavle, and to your Bishop Lavrentije, to your families and friends and to the dear Serbian people."

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CANA AND THE JUBILEE, CHRIST'S TRANSFORMING ACTION

VATICAN CITY, JAN 14, 2001 (VIS) - In reflections made before reciting the angelus with the faithful in St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul spoke of today's Gospel story of the first miracle performed by Christ at the wedding feast of Cana, calling it "the first 'sign' with which He manifested His glory and inspired faith in His disciples."

"Meditating on this page of the Gospel, one thinks spontaneously of the just-concluded Jubilee, which was for the Church and for the world a sort of great and memorable 'sign'. A year in which Christ, as He did at Cana, transformed the 'water' of our spiritual poverty into the generous 'wine' of renewal and commitment. And now that the great Jubilee has ended, it is with a greater impetus that we have again undertaken the 'ordinary' path, keeping our eyes more than ever fixed on the Lord's face, as I wrote in the Apostolic Letter 'Novo millennio ineunte'."

"The Holy Year," the Pope concluded, "has opened many hearts to hope and has enlightened the path of the world with the light of Christ."

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