Pope applauds Church's dialogue with the contemporary world

October 20, 2012: Pope Benedict XVI has applauded the Catholic Church’s dialogue with the contemporary world. He was speaking at a ceremony in Vatican in which the 2012 Ratzinger Prize for Theology was awarded to two persons. : the renowned US Jesuit theologian and scholar of patrology, Fr. Brian Edward Daley of Notre Dame University; and the lay French philosopher and historian, Professor Rémi Brague.

While appreciating their research and all the scientific work and the valuable service of teaching, the Pontiff said, both, in different ways, have actively made their qualified contribution to the Church's presence in the world today.

Pope Benedict on the occasion spoke of the profound and necessary connection between intellectual rigour and lived experience of the reality of God in all truly Catholic theological endeavour. “Father Daley and Professor Brague,” said the Pope, “are exemplary for the transmission of knowledge that unites science and wisdom, scientific rigor and passion for man, so that man might discover the [true] ‘art of living’. “It is of precisely such people who, through an enlightened and lived faith render God credible and close to the man of today’, added the Pontiff.