The world’s listening
I was wondering how much the world is still paying attention to what Benedict says since the Regensburg controversy settled down. Especially since he gave the Urbi et Orbi address to the world this Christmas Day.
It turns out they are. This kind of article is all across the world’s media today, I’ve noticed. But this is a particularly good one.
Mankind, which has reached other planets and unravelled many of nature’s secrets, should not presume it can live without God, Pope Benedict said in his Christmas message.
In an age of unbridled consumerism it was shameful many remained deaf to the “heart-rending cry” of those dying of hunger, thirst, disease, poverty, war and terrorism, he said.
“Does a ‘Saviour’ still have any value and meaning for the men and women of the third millennium?” he asked in his Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) message to the faithful in St Peter’s Square.
“Is a ‘Saviour’ still needed by a humanity which has reached the moon and Mars and is prepared to conquer the universe; for a humanity which knows no limits in its pursuit of nature’s secrets and which has succeeded even in deciphering the marvellous codes of the human genome?”
Who else is addressing these issues on a very moral, global scale?
Speaking to tens of thousands of people in a sunny square, he wished the world a Happy Christmas in 62 languages – including Arabic, Hebrew, Mongolian and Latin – but his speech highlighted his preoccupation with humanity’s fate.
As a good, global Father would naturally do.
