A courtesy visit, the other way around

Normally, the world comes to the Vatican to meet with the Pope, but today, the Pope went outside of the Vatican to visit one of the world's political leaders.  Pope Francis paid an official visit to the President of the Republic of Italy, Mister Giorgio Napolitano at the Quirinale Palace in Rome.

Here are English-language translations of the speeches the two exchanged during their visit:

Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis

for his official visit with the President of the Republic of Italy

Mr. President!

With heartfelt gratitude I return today the cordial visit that you paid me last June 8 in the Vatican. I thank you for the courteous expressions of welcome with which you received me, making yourself the interpreter of the Italian people.

In the institutional custom of relations between Italy and the Holy See, this visit confirms the excellent state of the reciprocal relations, and even intends first to express a sign of friendship. In fact, already in these first eight months of my Petrine service I have been able to experience in my dealings with you, Mr. President, so many gestures of attention. They are added to the many that you have progressively manifested, during your first seven years, in meetings with my predecessor Benedict XVI. To him I wish to address at this moment our thoughts and our affection, in memory of his visit to the Quirinale, which on that occasion he described as the symbolic home of all Italians (Address of October 4, 2008).

Visiting you in this place so charged with symbols and history, I would like to knock on the doors of each inhabitant of the country, where the roots of my earthly family lie, and offer the word of the Gospel, healing and always new, to all.

Thinking again of the salient moments in the relations between the Italian State and the Holy See, I would like to recall the insertion in the Republican Constitution of the Lateran Pacts and the Agreement of Revision of the Concordat, of which Agreement the thirtieth anniversary will be observed in a few weeks. We have here the solid framework of normative reference for the serene unfolding of relations between the State and Church in Italy, a framework that reflects and sustains the daily collaboration at the service of the human person in view of the common good, in the distinction of the respective role and realms of action.

There are so many questions in the face of which our concerns are common and the answers can be convergent. The present moment is marked by the economic crisis that calls to be overcome and that, among the most painful effects, is that of an insufficient availability of work. It is necessary to multiply efforts to alleviate the consequences and to gather and strengthen every sign of recovery.

The primary task awaiting the Church is that of witnessing the mercy of God and of encouraging generous answers of solidarity to open to a future of hope because, where hope grows, energies and commitment are also multiplied for the construction of a social and civil order that is more human and just, and new potentialities emerge for a sustainable and healthy development.

Impressed on my mind are the first pastoral visits that I made in Italy. To Lampedusa, first of all, where I saw up close the suffering of those who, because of wars or poverty, have taken to emigration in conditions that are often desperate; and where I saw the praiseworthy testimony of solidarity of so many who give themselves to the work of welcome. I remember also my visit to Cagliari, to pray before the Madonna of Bonaria; and to Assisi, to venerate the Saint who is patron of Italy and whose name I have taken. In these places also I touched with my own hand, the wounds that afflict so many people today.

At the centre of the hopes and social difficulties is the family. With renewed conviction, the Church continues to foster the commitment of all, individuals and institutions, in support of the family, which is the primary place in which the human being is formed and grows, in which values are learned and the examples that render them credible are lived. The family is in need of stability and recognition of reciprocal bonds, to display fully its irreplaceable task and carry out its mission. While it puts its energies at the disposition of society, it asks to be appreciated, valued and protected.

Mr. President, in this circumstance I am pleased to formulate the hope, supported by prayer, that Italy, drawing from its rich patrimony of civil and spiritual values, will be able to find once again the creativity and the concord necessary for its harmonious development, to promote the common good and the dignity of every person, and to offer in the international context its contribution for peace and justice.

Finally, I am particularly pleased to associate myself to the esteem and affection that the Italian people have for your person and to renew to you my most cordial wishes for the fulfillment of the duties proper to your very high office. May God protect Italy and all its inhabitants.

Speech of His Excellency, Giorgio Napolitano

President of the Republic of Italy

Your Holiness,

It is a privilege and a reason of sincere emotion to welcome and receive you in this Palace, an incomparable witness of history and creativity. To it we dedicate every care and still explore it, rediscovering and restoring  -- as we did in recent years – environments and legacies of art that date back to the 1600s, the work of Pontiffs such as Urban VIII and Alexander VII.

Of the extraordinary multi-secular heritage constituted by the Quirinale Palace, the Presidents of the Republic are only, for the past few decades, passionate and respectful custodians, making it an open space and common home for all Italians.

Here Your Holiness, lives a history which you bear within you, for never having lost the imprint of the land of origin of your family, from which you were called almost from the end of the world to lead the Church from the Throne of Peter. And I would not like the formal solemnity proper  -- by tradition and institutional weight – of this ceremony, to blur the expression of genuine sentiments of closeness and affection that your figure, your way of addressing all of us and your pastoral commitment have awakened in our spirit from the first moments of your pontificate. They are sentiments and thoughts that touch us well beyond the fabric of relations between the Church and the State in Italy. These relations certainly remain essential, though being projected now on a broader horizon; and from them I intend, therefore, to begin again, because of the solid and clear frame of reference that they represent.

The choice of the Constituent Assembly, in March of 1947, to inscribe them in our fundamental Charter, anchoring them to the Lateran Pacts was an enlightened choice. The fact that those Pacts were underwritten – at the end of a long process of rapprochement – in 1929, when in Italy the Fascist regime prevailed, did not veil the understanding, in the days of the Constituent Assembly, of the non-contingent value of the Conciliation thus obtained: and did not impede work subsequently on the revision of the Concordat, placing it fully in the new democratic-constitutional context of Republican Italy.

It was possible, in the course of this path, to recognize one another in respect of the secularism and sovereignty of the State, and at the same time the liberty and sovereignty of the Church, and to converge increasingly in the work for the promotion of man and of the good of the country.  Reinforced decisively was the national unity that is for Italy a condition of all security and progress, and to which Benedict XVI wished to pay tribute with his memorable message of March 17, 2011, for our one hundred fiftieth anniversary, putting in evidence the two supreme principles called to preside over the relations between the Church and the political community  -- that of the distinction of realms and that of collaboration. Principles – I observe – which must always be guarded and which we see today expressed, Your Holiness, with clarity and profoundness in your thoughts and in your words. This is the meaning, therefore, of the homage that is rendered to you here today by the most significant representations of the Italian State, of institutions and of State bodies. To these we wish to add a group of representative personalities of civil society, of the world of culture, secular and Catholic, as well as of the world of solidarity towards the poor, the suffering, the least so dear to you.

And we thought of these new presences on the occasion of your visit to gather the inspiration that moves you, the intent not to leave your commitment shut in, your pastoral address itself on the horizon of a relation between institutions. You have transmitted in the most direct way to each one of us, motives for reflection and great suggestions for our individual and collective action. And you have done so in these months talking to us about yourself, telling us – with amazing generosity and genuineness – much about your formation, your evolution, your vision.

And to all – believers and non-believers – you have reached out through simple and strong words, sharing with them your concept of the Church and of faith.

We have been struck by the absence of all dogmatism, the distancing from positions not touched by a margin of uncertainty, the call to leave space for doubt, a habit proper of the great leaders of the People of God.

In your words, we have felt vibrate the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, as a rereading of the Gospel in the light of contemporary culture. And thus we see profiled a new perspective in that dialogue with everyone, also the most estranged and with adversaries, that you, Your Holiness, have requested and that constitutes in fact the broadest horizon – beyond the context of relations between Church and State – to which today we must necessarily tend.

I would say that necessarily in face of the unheard challenges of today, challenges which are to be overcome as we look toward the future – through the widest mobilization of consciences and energies – first of all are the moral challenges facing a people such as ours, and all people.

I speak of challenges that involve the whole international community: first of all, that of re-establishing and preserving peace in regions tormented by lacerating conflicts, such as the Middle East and the Mediterranean here in particular Italy and the united Europe are indebted to finding effective answers and commitments.

However, the challenges to be faced in the world today are also of an anthropological nature. Over time man changes his way of perceiving himself, man is seeking to find himself, you have said, and have put us on guard against the thought that loses the human from view.

Your strong consideration for the person, even your wanting to look at individual persons, one at a time, when you speak to great masses gathered to hear you, is a distinctive character of your pastoral mission. To be able to communicate with the simple, to be able to transmit to each one and to all the values of the Christian message – first of all that of love for others – emits new potentialities to combat the flood of egoism, of social insensibility, of the most prejudiced worship of one’s own personal benefit.

To react everywhere to similar phenomena of regression and to have inalienable ideal and moral parameters valued, the role of Europe, I would like to stress, remains essential, inasmuch as it was founded – historically and in its common institutions today – on those values of respect of human dignity, of tolerance, justice, and solidarity, that bear the sign of the Christian heritage.

It is, in effect, by soliciting a new spirit of solidaristic and responsible association to which we must be dedicated – guided by hope – to overcome the gravest evils that afflict the world today. Beginning with the evils provoked or exasperated by the crisis of these years be it in the fringes of different continents, in places that still remain on the margins of a modern economic development and social well-being, be it in countries of afflicted Europe: extreme evils, like you have said – on one hand the desperate condition of young people deprived of work, who appear to be crushed by the present, and on the other, the loneliness in which the elderly are left.

Arising as never before are common responsibilities. Responsibilities that the Church assumes by expressing and spreading her values, freeing herself from every residue of temporality, and displaying the initiative of institutions that respond to her in the solidaristic and educational terrain that is proper to them. Responsibilities that in their turn in the very different fields in which they are called to operate, are assumed by political, secular and independent institutions by definition.

Politics has seen, however, exposed as it is not only on founded criticisms but toward destructive attacks  – the dramatic necessity (we see it well in Italy) to recover participation, consensus and respect, freeing ourselves of the plague of corruption and of the meanest particularisms. We can succeed only by renewing – together with its pluralistic articulation – its own ideal, social and cultural bases. And I believe that in this sense politics can, Your Holiness, bring a new stimulus from your message and your words. A message that, as you yourself have said, is addressed not only to Catholics but to all men of good will, and which makes one think, therefore, of a dialogue without precedence in its amplitude and profundity between believers and non-believers, of a kind of symbolic, immense Courtyard of the Gentiles.

You see, Your Holiness, we who in Italy exercise functions of representation and leadership in the political institutions, are immersed in a toilsome daily routine, dominated by the tumultuous pressure and gravity of the problems of the country and sometimes of exasperations on the part of a climate often poisoned and destabilizing. How far we are in our country from that culture of encounter that you love to evoke, from your invocation Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue!

Well, in fact for us who now render homage to you here, as for all the expressions of the ruling class of Italy, it is time to raise one’s gaze higher, to regain far-sightedness and to take ourselves to the level of decisive challenges that already today, project themselves on tomorrow. Bringing to birth also from this extraordinary and so lofty occasion of encounter, a commitment comparable to that of which you, Your Holiness, Pope Francis, are giving us an example.