DADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE PAUL VI
TO THE SOVEREING MILITARY ORDER OF MALTA*

Monday, 8 July 1974

We greatly appreciate the devout tribute that the Sovereign Order of Malta has expressed to us this year also by means of its Grand Master and its Councillors present here, to whom we extend our affectionate and respectful greeting.

This meeting with the illustrious representatives and leaders of the Order is an opportunity also to reconfirm our sincere appreciation of the well-deserving activity that your Order, in faithfulness to its specific vocation, carries out in the various continents in the field of health care and of charitable works of every kind.

For this help that you offer to so many sick, suffering and needy brothers, for the comfort you give then, we express to you our warmest gratitude. Charity is, indeed, a Christian testimony of very high value, since it draws souls to Christ and brings down abundant blessings from God.

We would like to exhort you always to have this great concept of your service, to carry it out continually with disinterestedness, humility and above all with that spirit of faith that confess on works a vigour, a dignity and a merit of supernatural nature. And this will certainly happen it, alongside the care of constantly perfecting your services on the technical and organizational plane, the Order is concerned to ensure its members an adequate spiritual formation, which alone can guarantee it its original spirit and the very reason for its existence.

With these sentiments we express out best wishes for your activity, and as a token of the choicest graces of Heaven we impart to you present here, to all the members of the Order and their families, our fatherly Apostolic Blessing.

*ORa n°29 p.2.