Pope urges defence of human dignity, 'justice and peace' in Holy Land, Middle East

(December 5, 2008) Pope Benedict XVI stressed on Friday the need and urgency to create within culture and in civil and political society, indispensable conditions for a full awareness of the indisputable values of natural moral law which is written in the heart of man. The Pope’s advice came in his talk to the members of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission at the end of their plenary session. “Moral law,” he said, “is the true guarantee offered to each human being to be able to live freely and be respected in his dignity as a person, and to feel defended from any form of ideological manipulation and from every abuse perpetrated by laws created by the powerful.” He told the members of the commission that the “fundamental virtue of a theologian is obedience to faith”, which, he said, makes him collaborate with truth. Therefore, he explained, a theologian will not talk about himself. Rather, purified by obedience to truth from within, it will be truth that will talk in him.
Pope Benedict also met on Friday, members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, and urged for justice and peace in the Holy Land. The confraternity, popularly known as the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, is a Catholic chivalric order of Knighthood, whose origin can be traced to late 11^th century when Christians of Europe joined the crusades to protect the Christian sites and communities in the Holy Land against Muslim Turks overrunning the region. But today the charitable order is engaged in collecting funds for Christians in the Palestine territories and Israel. Pope Benedict, who very much wishes to visit the Holy land, expressed his solidarity with the Christians of the Middle East who are forced to emigrate.