Vatican City, Sep 30, 2009 / 09:07 am
With 10,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI dedicated Wednesday’s general audience to retracing the stages of his journey to the Czech Republic. The history of the region, the Pope explained, shows us that progress must either be rooted in “integral human formation” or risk falling prey to dictators. In our day, the dictator is relativism, coupled with the dominance of technology.
The journey to the Czech Republic, he said, “was both a true pilgrimage and a mission to the heart of Europe, a pilgrimage, because Bohemia and Moravia have for over one thousand years been territories of faith and holiness, a mission, because Europe needs to find in God and His love the firm foundation of hope.”
"The love of Christ is our strength,” the Pope stated, explaining that it is "a force which inspires and animates real revolution, peaceful and free, and which sustains us in times of crisis, allowing us to rise again when painfully recovered freedom is in danger of being lost, of loosing its true meaning.”
Recalling his visit to the Church of Our Lady Victorious in the Czech capital, where the famous statue of the Infant of Prague is located, Benedict XVI reminded the faithful that, “The love of Christ began to reveal itself in the face of a child." The Infant of Prague statue, he added, “reminds us of the mystery of God made man, God close to us, the foundation of our hope," and in that church "I prayed for children, parents and the future of families."