ADDRESS OF PAUL VI
TO THE FOREING MINISTER OF GUATEMALA*

Friday, 3 November 1972

Mr. Minister,

We receive your courteous visit gratefully and we give you the welcome due to one who fills an office of such high responsibility in his country. Your Excellency also offers us the opportunity to repeat our expressions of deep affection for the whole beloved people of Guatemala. The Creator has been prodigal with your country, endowing it with natural beauty and material goods, which give the possibility of greater development. But the great wealth of your country is its sons, good, simple people, on whose common and brotherly work the implementation of this development largely depends.

The Church wishes to continue to render its service of illuminating the way with the light of the Christian message and to contribute to the good of all, within the field of her competence. She makes her own the just aspirations, the hopes, the joys and sorrows of your people, and interprets them, thinking with special affection of the needs of the poorest, peasants and youth.

We express fervent wishes that the desired progress of Guatemala may be rapid and orderly, inspired by Christian principles, with complete respect, more conscious every day, for the sacred character of the human person and his rights; in an environment of peace and justice, in which no kind of violence remains, and there prevails only the strength of brotherly love, mutual respect, understanding and fruitful collaboration.

With these fatherly wishes for your country and expressing our respectful greeting to Your Excellency and to the authorities of Guatemala, we willingly invoke upon all beloved Guatemalans the blessings of the Almighty.

*ORa n.46 p.3.