VATICAN - “We can only give true social justice if this is done in view of genuine solidarity which demands living and operating always for each other and never against or to the disadvantage of others.”: the Pope addresses participants at a Meeting promoted by the Centesimus Annus Foundation

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “We can only give true social justice if this is done in view of genuine solidarity which demands living and operating always for each other and never against or to the disadvantage of others. How to render all this concrete in the context of the world today is the great challenge of Christian lay people”. This concept was expressed by the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI in his address to participants at a Meeting promoted by the Foundation Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice received in audience on 20 May at the end of the morning.
The Foundation, as the Pope said in his address, recalls in its name “John Paul II’s last great social encyclical with which, summarising a hundred years of Magisterium in this field, the unforgettable Pontiff projected the Church forward stimulating confrontation with the res novae of the third millennium”. The Foundation has the duty to collaborate “so that in the different cultural areas of the present day world the social doctrine of the Church may fulfil perfectly its task for the diffusion of the Gospel”. Lastly, the Pope said “the qualification Pro Pontifice underlines, in turn, your intention to cultivate a special vicinity with the pastoral duty of the Bishop of Rome, striving to help according to your possibilities to sustain the concrete tools of which he has need to animate and encourage the presence of the Church in the whole world”.
Expressing satisfaction for the expanding activities of the Foundation in Europe and in America, the Holy Father stressed the topical nature of the themes addressed by the Study Meeting promoted by the Foundation on the theme "Democracy, institutions and social justice", recalling that authentic democracy “if properly used is still the most valid historical means for planning our future in a manner worthy of mankind”. The Pope then dwelt on two critical points identified by the Meeting “on the path to a more mature order of human co-existence”: the necessity of “appropriate, credible, authoritative institutions whose goal is not merely management of public power … and tenacious, ongoing and united efforts to promote social justice”.
Lastly Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the members of the Foundation since they are lay Catholics, to live as theirs “the immediate task to work for just order in society”, since “charity should animate the entire existence of the lay faithful and therefore also their political activity, lived as «social charity»”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 22/5/2006 - righe 28; parole 378)