Your Excellencies,

1. I welcome you with pleasure on the occasion of the presentation of the Letters accrediting you as Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of your countries: Kenya, Luxembourg, Malawi, Norway and Thailand. As I thank you for conveying to me the courteous words of your Heads of State, I should be grateful if you would express my respectful wishes to them and for their important mission at the service of their country. Through you, I also greet the civil and religious Leaders of your nations and all your compatriots, with a special thought for the Catholic communities.

2. Our world continues to be marked by the scourge of war. In the face of humanitarian tragedies, a burst of creative, charitable, financial and political action is asked of the international community. It is important that diplomacy, for its part, persevere in making peace triumph. I appeal once again to all people of good will to lay down their arms definitively and take the path of trusting and brotherly dialogue. Violence serves neither the cause of peoples nor their development.

I therefore express the wish that our contemporaries, particularly the leaders who watch over the people's future, may be increasingly concerned to serve humankind and the common good.

I offer you my very best wishes for your new mission, and upon you, your families, your collaborators and your countries, I invoke an abundance of divine benefits.

*L'Osservatore Romano. Weekly Edition in English n. 51/52 p.3.

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