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'Worship God, not technology'
25/12/2006 14:42 - (SA)
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| Pope Benedict XVI holds the pastoral staff as he celebrates the Christmas Midnight Mass in St Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. (Andrew Medichini, AP) |
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Vatican City - Pope Benedict said in his Christmas message on Monday that mankind, that has reached other planets and worshiped technology, could not live without God or turn its back on the hungry.
It was shameful that in "this age of plenty and unbridled consumerism" many remained deaf to the "heart-rending cry" of those dying of hunger, thirst, disease, poverty, war and terrorism.
In his "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message, the Pope made a heartfelt appeal for peace and justice in the Middle East, an end to the "brutal violence" in Iraq and a solution to fratricidal conflicts in Darfur and other parts of Africa.
"Does a 'saviour' still have any value and meaning for the men and women of the third millennium?" he asked in his address to tens of thousands of people in a sunny St Peter's Square in the Vatican.
'Humanity knows no limits'
"Is a 'saviour' still needed by a humanity that has reached the moon and Mars and is prepared to conquer the universe, for a humanity that knows no limits in its pursuit of nature's secrets and that has succeeded even in deciphering the marvellous codes of the human genome?
"Is a 'saviour' needed by a humanity that has invented interactive communication, that navigates in the virtual ocean of the internet and, thanks to the most advanced modern communications technologies, has now made the Earth, our great common home, a global village?"
The Pope, marking the second Christmas season of his pontificate, said that while 21st century man appeared to be a master of his own destiny, "perhaps he needs a saviour all the more" because so much of humanity still suffered.
'Maimed by violence'
"People continue to die of hunger and thirst, disease and poverty, in this age of plenty and of unbridled consumerism," he said from the central balcony of Christendom's largest church.
"Some people remain enslaved, exploited and stripped of their dignity, others are victims of racial and religious hatred, hampered by intolerance and discrimination, and by political interference and physical or moral coercion with regard to the free profession of their faith.
"Others see their own bodies and those of their dear ones, particularly their children, maimed by weaponry, by terrorism and by all sorts of violence, at a time when everyone invokes and acclaims progress, solidarity and peace for all."
The Pope also referred to the controversial case of Piergiorgio Welby, a paralysed Italian man who was denied a Catholic service because he had asked to die.
"What are we to think of those who choose death in the belief that they are celebrating life?" he said.
Welby, an advocate of euthanasia, died on Wednesday after a doctor gave him sedatives and detached a respirator that had kept the victim of advanced muscular dystrophy alive for years.
- Reuters
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