"All Will Clearly See the Atypical Character of Pontifical Diplomacy"
VATICAN CITY, JUNE 4, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's Saturday address to the superiors and alumni of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy.
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Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate,
Dear Superiors and Priests,
Welcome to you who form the family of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy! I listened with attention and gratitude to the address that your president made to me in your name and I thank him from my heart. His words of congratulations for the book "Jesus of Nazareth," fruit of my personal search for the face of Christ, show that the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy rightly considers the ardent desire to know the Lord more and more a fundamental value for those who, like you, are called in diplomatic service to a special collaboration with the successor of Peter. In effect, dear alumni, the more you seek the face of Christ the better you will be able to serve the Church and people -- Christians and non-Christians -- whom you will meet along the way as pontifical representatives throughout the world.
When, like today, I have the happy opportunity to meet you, I think of your future service to the Church. I think also of your bishops, who have sent you to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy to help the Pope in his universal mission for the particular Churches and for the various civil jurisdictions with whom the Holy See has a relationship. The service for which you are destined and for which you prepare here in Rome, is the service of qualified witness to the Churches and the authorities of the countries to which, if it pleases God, you will be sent.
The witness to the Gospel is asked to be faithful in every circumstance to the mission with which he has been entrusted. For you this means, in the first place, a personal and profound experience of the incarnate God, an intimate friendship with Jesus, in whose name the Church sends you for a singular apostolic task. You know that the Christian faith can never be reduced to a mere intellectual knowledge of Christ and his doctrine; it must always express itself in the imitation of the examples that Christ gave us as Son of the Father and Son of man. In particular, he who collaborates with the Successor of Peter, Supreme Shepherd of the Catholic Church, is called to do his best to be a true shepherd, ready, as Jesus the Good Shepherd, to give his life for his flock.
I was very grateful therefore for the aspiration that animates you and that you have expressed through your president, that is, to be fundamentally shepherds; always shepherds alongside the other shepherds of the Church, before also being -- along with the pontifical representatives with whom you will work -- promoters and weavers of fruitful relationships with civil authorities, as the particular Catholic tradition wishes. Cultivate this, your ardent desire, so that those who draw near to you will always be able to discover the priest that is in you. In this way, all will clearly see the atypical character of pontifical diplomacy, a diplomacy that, as the numerous accredited diplomatic missions to the Apostolic See can testify, far from defending material interests or partial visions of man, promotes the values that flow from the Gospel, as the expression of the high ideals proclaimed by Jesus, sole and universal Savior. These values, after all, are in no small part a patrimony also shared by other religions and other cultures.
Dear friends, even when you leave the academy -- more than a dozen of you are preparing to do so in the following weeks -- continue to cultivate an intimate and personal friendship with Jesus, seeking more and more to know and assimilate the thoughts and sentiments that were his (Philippians 2:5). The more deeply you know him, the more strongly will you be united to him and the more faithful you will be to your priestly commitments, all the more and better will you be able to serve people, the more fruitful will be your dialogue with them, the more accessible will appear the peace that you will propose in situations of tension and conflict, the more consoling will be the comfort that, in the name of Christ and his Church, you offer to those persons who undergo trial and are without defense. In this way the convergence between your mission and the evangelization proposed by those with pastoral responsibilities will appear with greater clarity to the eyes of the world.
Dear brothers, as I entrust these brief reflections to your attention, I am happy to renew my wish of every good to you and your families. With my whole heart I assure you a remembrance in my prayer and, invoking the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary, with pleasure I bless you, those who have care of your formation, and all your loved ones.
[Translation by ZENIT]
Code: ZE07060421
Date: 2007-06-04