ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE PAUL VI
TO THE AMBASSADOR OF BOLIVIA*

Thursday, 16 July 1970

Mr. Ambassador,

We have listened with sincere appreciation and gratitude to the deferential words which you have just addressed to Us on this occasion when presenting your Letters of Credence, which accredit you as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Bolivia with the Holy See.

We recognize with pleasure the Christian aspirations and filial sentiments of Our most beloved children of the Bolivian Nation in your noble words of fidelity to Our person and to and those high ideals of peace and progress which are the basis of Our pastoral solicitude.

The object of those aspirations is harmonious development, of individuals and communities, spiritually, morally and socially. Those aspirations are particularly strongly represented in the Church's pastoral action today, as nourishment and as a pledge of fraternity. We trust that they shall be accomplished in serenity and concord, with collaboration from all who hunger and thirst for justice. The Church cannot but regard with deep pleasure the efforts which are being made in this direction in your country. In accordance with her divine mission, she encourages, orientates and aids such efforts, by putting the moral power of her teaching, resolute work on the part of her children and collaboration from their institutions at the service of all mankind, and by making herself the defender and protector of the most needy, as her Founder did.

We have listened with particular interest, Mr. Ambassador, to your reference to plans for spreading literacy. That is something in which the Church can always offer special help. In fact, the first priests who ever went to your country were concerned to see that the light of the Gospel and preaching of the Gospel should be seeds of culture and progress. Those priests contributed in a most decisive way to making Bolivian teaching institutions some of the most important on the American continent.

That glorious tradition is now a stimulus and a hope. It urges us to trust in fruitful enterprises, and it opens fresh horizons of Christian progress to so many of Our most beloved Children of Bolivia.

We give you most cordial welcome, Mr. Ambassador, and offer Our best wishes for the happy accomplishment of your lofty mission. We are pleased to call down plentiful and choicest divine blessings upon your person, upon His Excellency the President and the Government of your country, and upon the whole dearly beloved Bolivian People.

*ORa n.31 p.4.