Church must defend basic truths about man, Pope says

November 07, 2011

Speaking on November 7 to a new ambassador from Germany to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI said that when the Church becomes involved in legislature affairs, the goal is “defending values which are evident to everyone because they concern the truth about human beings.”

The Pontiff explained to the new envoy, Reinhard Schweppe, that the Church knows the truth about mankind, and has an obligation to defend that truth in the public sphere.

In Germany, the Pope continued, some fundamental truths where enshrined in the post-war constitution and the Declaration of Human Rights. “Today, however, certain basic values of human life are again being put into question,” he said. He went on:

We are not qualified to judge--to speak of one particularly important topic--whether an individual is “already a person” or “still a person;” even less so do we have the right to manipulate and, so to say, “to create” man. Only a society which unconditionally respects and defends the dignity of each human being, from conception to natural end, can call itself a human society.

 

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Further information:

• Letters of Credence of New German Ambassador (VIS)