Pope urges Germany to pursue social ideals

(December 5, 2009) Sixty years after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pope Benedict XVI urged Germany to continue to build a free and humanitarian country. The German constitution, signed in May 1949, called for respect for human dignity, marriage and the family, and it helped contribute to the peaceful development of Germany over the past six decades, he said. The Pope spoke at the end of a December 4 classical music concert hosted for the pontiff and guests by German President Horst Kohler. The evening concert in the Sistine Chapel featured the Christmas Oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by the Augsburger Domsingknaben Chamber Choir and Munich's chamber orchestra. The concert commemorated the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Federal Republic of Germany and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The pope, who is German, said the wall was a "border of death" that "divided our country and forcibly separated men, women, families, neighbours and friends." The fall of the wall in November 1989 ushered in a new and unexpected era of freedom, he said, "after a long and painful night of violence and oppression from a totalitarian system that, in the end, led to nihilism and an emptying of spirit." The pope said that "In the communist dictatorship, there was no action that would have been regarded as bad in itself and always immoral," he said. "What was done to fulfil the objectives of the party was good, however inhumane it could have been." To those who doubt whether the modern Western social order is any better or more humane, "the history of the Federal Republic of German is the proof," he said. The country's constitution is based on the principles of human dignity and human responsibility to God, and has been the basis for six decades of peaceful development, he said.