VATICAN - Pope Benedict XVI sends a letter to the new editor of the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano: “Seeking and creating occasions of comparison, the Osservatore Romano will serve the Holy See demonstrating the fecundity of the encounter of faith and reason, which renders possible cordial collaboration between believers and non believers”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI sent a letter to the new editor of the Osservatore Romano, Prof. Giovanni Maria Vian, the day he assumed his new responsibility. On the Letter, dated 27 October 2007, the Pope underlines Prof. Vian's “extensive cultural formation as an historian of Christianity… and especially your knowledge of the modern day papacy, your experience as a journalist and editorialist for various dailies and periodicals, decades of collaboration with the Osservatore Romano, and the son of an illustrious family of great Christian tradition and faithful service to the Holy See”, motives “constitute a guarantee for a delicate task” entrusted to him.
The Pope recalls “the long and great history of ‘the Pope's newspaper", started in 1861 “to sustain the freedom of the Holy See at a critical and providential moment of its history”. Since then the newspaper “had diffused the teachings of the Roman Pontiffs, interventions of his closest collaborators on crucial issues encountered by humanity on its journey”. The publication of weekly editions in different languages underlines the global dimension of the Osservatore Romano, “which will become ever more concrete and effective with the possibilities offered today by its presence on the Internet. The Message emphasises that “this is most important in order to really express the reality of the universal Church, communion among all local Churches deeply rooted in different situations, in a context of an attitude of sincere friendship towards the men and women of our day ”.
Lastly Benedict XVI indicates the prospects of the Vatican newspaper: “Seeking and creating occasions of comparison, the Osservatore Romano will serve the Holy See demonstrating the fecundity of the encounter of faith and reason, which renders possible cordial collaboration between believers and non believers”. Its fundamental task obviously as always is to foster in the cultures of our times trustful and profoundly reasonable openness to the Transcendent which, in ultimate instance, is the foundation of respect for the dignity and the authentic freedom of every human person ”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 29/10/2007; righe 26, parole 356)