Urges Christians in Public Square to Defend Life

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, SEPT 24, 2012 (Zenit.org). - On Saturday, Benedict XVI addressed participants from a meeting of the Christian/Centrist Democrat international organization's Executive Committee, which took place on Friday in Rome.

He welcomed the organization's president, Italian politician Pier Ferdinando Casini. "Five years have passed since our last meeting, during which time the involvement of Christians in society has not ceased to enliven and improve human relations and living conditions," the Pope said.

"This commitment must not lessen or decrease; rather, it must be proffered with renewed vitality, in view of the persistence and, in some cases, the worsening of the problems we are facing," he added.

In these difficult economic times Christians are called to act with a "prophetic spirit," the Pontiff urged. A spirit, he explained, "capable of seeing in these transformations the unceasing and mysterious presence of God in history - and thus to shoulder their newly emerging responsibilities with realism, confidence and hope."

Benedict XVI urged them to act with confidence and to base their civil and political activity on solid ethical foundations, "the lack of which in the economic field has helped to create the current global financial crisis."

The central and indispensable goal of political commitment must be the search for the common good, the Pope recommended, and the promotion and protection of the dignity of the human person.

The Holy Father criticized the way in which fundamental human needs are often met with "cursory, superficial and short-term responses."

There is a need for a commitment to respect life from conception to natural death, the Pope said. This means rejecting abortion, euthanasia and any form of eugenics, he explained. He also insisted on respecting marriage "as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman and, in its turn, as the foundation for the community of family life."

"The authentic progress of human society cannot forgo policies aimed at protecting and promoting marriage, and the community that derives there from," he continued.

The defence and promotion of human dignity have been entrusted to us by the Creator and in particular to those called to political office, the Pope concluded.

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