Vatican City, Dec 18, 2008 / 10:24 am
Ten new ambassadors to the Vatican from all parts of the world were received by Pope Benedict in an audience on Thursday. Speaking to the group in French, the Pope explained that their role is to help the world obtain true justice by helping it become "adjusted to God's plan and His order."
The new diplomats hail from Malawi, Sweden, Sierra Leon, Iceland, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Belize, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Bahrain and the Fiji Islands. Before receiving a country-specific written message from the Holy Father, the group was addressed in French.
The Pope began his thoughts by observing that the assembled group comes from diverse corners of the world and saying that this diversity "gives me cause to thank God for His creative love and for the multiplicity of His gifts, which never cease to surprise humanity."
Diversity, Pope Benedict noted, can cause fear at times, "which is why it is not to be wondered at if human beings prefer the monotony of uniformity." In fact, he said, "some political-economic systems, claiming pagan or religious origins, have afflicted humanity for too long, attempting to render it the same through demagogy and violence. Those systems have reduced and continue to reduce the human being to a wretched slavery at the service of a single ideology or of an inhuman and pseudo-scientific economy."