Learning to Respect Cultural Diversity (Message from the Holy Father)

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9-December-2004 -- Vatican Information Service

LEARNING TO RESPECT CULTURAL DIVERSITY


VATICAN CITY, DEC 9, 2004 (VIS) - This morning in the Holy See Press Office, Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, presented the Holy Father's Message for the World Day of the Migrant and Refugee in 2005. Its theme this year is "Intercultural Integration."

Cardinal Hamao indicated that "when we speak about intercultural issues we tend to concentrate on the topic of different cultures and we forget about the condition of migrants who suffer social inequality." He underscored the need "to eliminate obstacles to social equality for migrants, while valuing the differences of people coming from different cultural contexts."

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Speaking about migration, ethnic and cultural pluralism and the unity of the Church, Archbishop Marchetto, citing the instruction, indicated that "migration brings to each local Church the opportunity to verify its catholicity which consists not only in accepting different ethnicities but also in making a community of these ethnicities. Ethnic and cultural pluralism in the Church is not a situation that should be tolerated as a temporary one but rather it should be seen as a structural dimension."

"One of the most difficult challenges in the third millennium," he concluded, "is to learn how to live united in diversity and multiplicity of cultures, ethnicities and religions. Respect and recognition of the different cultural identities must not be an obstacle but a basic condition to build up humanity, united in diversity."

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