Pope meets Argentina’s new ambassador

(December 5, 2008) Pope Benedict XVI on Friday urged Argentina to defend the indisputable values of marriage between a man and woman and that of human life against all forms of abortion and euthanasia. The Pope made the call in an address to Argentina’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Juan Pablo Cafiero, who presented his credentials to the Pontiff at a formal ceremony in the Vatican. “The 21st century is showing us with increasingly greater clarity the need to forge personal, family and social life according to those values that exalt the inalienable values of the person and the entire community. He highlighted several of these values, viz: support to family based on marriage between a man and a woman, aiming at moral values whose principles are written in the depths of the human soul, a generous spirit of sacrifice and solidarity which is specially demonstrated in particularly adverse circumstances, the defence of human life from conception until its natural end, the eradication of poverty, the fight against corruption, adoption of measures to help parents in their inalienable right to educate their children in their own ethical and religious convictions, as well as the promotion of youth, to be men and women of peace and reconciliation.