THE POPE'S MISSION OF PEACE, RECONCILIATION AND RESPECT
President of Slovenia welcomes his Holiness Pope John Paul II

Ljubljana, Brnik Airport, 17 May 1996



Your Holiness,
I welcome you most sincerely on your long-awaited visit to Slovenia! I share my pleasure and joy on this occasion with the citizens of our country, Catholics and other Christians, and with all people of good will. Welcome here among us!

We have followed with anticipation, compassion and approval your unstinting efforts to win over all of humanity, and in particular the most powerful political leaders, to the most compelling truth of the times in which we live. For at the turn of the millennium, humankind has no other choice but to make for itself a world of peace and mutual respect, free from violence and war; a world which will respect all differences - cultural, political, spiritual and ethnic. Together with Your Holiness I believe that we are all capable of doing this. After the many tragic experiences of this century, our hopes are now focused on such a world. If all people, especially political leaders, seriously considered your persistent exhortation, the world into which we are born would certainly be more pleasant than it is in reality.

The end of the second millennium has laid the foundations of a global awareness that there exists one single human world, to which all people of Earth have a right. This is an awareness that there exists in this world a life for which we are responsible and which has been handed down to us by the generations before us, and which we will then hand down to those who come after us. Under the shelter of such a world it will, I hope, be possible to fulfil your conception of a civilisation of love, which you spoke about so convincingly at last year's session of the United Nations.

We want to believe in this and we also want to do something ourselves. We oppose killing and abuse, starvation and cruelty, enmity and violence, intolerance, degradation and exploitation, which are still critical elements of the way of life in many countries, even in Europe. Security, social justice and respect of the dignity of the person, his personal and national rights, respect of human work remain in many places a distant ideal, something on which you have convinced many people in numerous encounters around the world. Your rebuke was then sharp yet encouraging.

For the past four years our country has lived on the very edge of the horrors of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Croatia. We have felt the chill breath of extreme violence and death, which has apocalyptically scythed through these lands. More than soldiers, the victims have been children, women, the old, the incapacitated and the weak. Your Holiness was one of the rare challenging and courageous figures in the world who from the very beginning, from 1991, made a clear distinction between the aggressors and the victims. You demanded an end to the pretence as well as determined action from the international community to bring an end to the conflict. Sadly this only came about at the end of last year. The devastation and violence of war, which have entirely degraded human dignity, are a reminder to humanity. Once again, humankind has been given a test of whether it will remain loyal to the principles and values which bind it, or succumb to the cruel might and violence which in their destructive rage threaten to ruin everything of value created by the human spirit.

Your Holiness,
For centuries the Slovenes, together with the other nations of our continent, have been creating the Western European Christian civilisation. Our Carantanian forebears accepted Christianity 1,250 years ago. A thousand years ago we received the Freising Manuscripts, the oldest preserved cultural and religious document - a catechism and liturgy - in the Slovene language. The Christian Church and prominent church figures helped considerably, perhaps decisively to preserve the Slovene nation through the long years of its inclement history, and helped it to consolidate its national self-awareness and self-respect, which in turn led to our own statehood. Perhaps we could regard it as a miracle, that we prevailed over our unfavourable history and that we held together as a nation in spite of the coercive attempts to deny us our national identity. We also succeeded because among us were born people such as Primoz Trubar and other Christian writers, who raised Slovene to a church and literary language, with the translation of the Holy Book in 1584. This translation and other works in Slovene laid the foundations nearly five hundred years ago for our literature, language and national self-awareness.

Another great proponent of our Slovene identity was Maribor Bishop Anton Martin Slomsek, who decisively and relentlessly defended the Slovene language and culture against aggressive and ruthless Germanisation. These great men will never be forgotten by the nation's memory. Nor will we forget that the Holy See was among the first early in 1992 to recognise the new Slovene state. The Holy See decided to recognise the new facts which had emerged with the collapse of the ideological and political division of Europe, for better than others it understood the signs of the new time. It set an example and gave courage to other countries. It was perhaps this very international recognition which along with other circumstances helped us at the last moment to avoid destruction, suffering, sacrifices and moral damage which a long war would have brought to our land. We were able to begin a new life in peace in our own country.

Your Holiness,
A considerable time before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the leaders of Slovenia, in tandem with the strongly developed civil political movements, introduced radical social changes and prepared the transition to multi-party democracy. They built into the foundations of our new social order respect of human dignity and protection of human rights. This came to fruition on Palm Sunday, 1990, with the first multi-party elections. They were made possible by the agreement of the main political players. This was an agreement between those who in the plebiscite on independence held at Christmas of the same year, were able again to seek a consensus over the future of the Slovene nation and its state, and were able also to take personal, political and moral responsibility for it. Even the military aggression against us in the summer of 1991 could not break the firm faith and unity of the Slovenes and all the citizens of Slovenia in gaining independence and reorganising our society in line with European standards and with the values of European civilisation, built into the foundations of the first Slovene state in modern history.

We are aware that alongside the economic and political changes, which as a result of Slovene unity and the extraordinary historical circumstance we succeeded in carrying out, of equal or even greater importance is the concern for our spiritual life, for universal moral and other values of life, whose natural roots lie in the Western European Christian civilisation, in the philosophy of life with love, in mutual respect, tolerance and unsel fish help for others and those who are different. Now the Slovenes have the unique opportunity to heal many wounds, in the name of our common responsibility for the Slovene state, which has created in a civilised manner the current generation of Slovenes, and in our common work for a new future without enmity and tragic divisions kept over from the past. Such wounds have been inflicted on us many times by our inclement and cruel past, including times such as during the Second World War when, like your native Poland, we were almost wiped off the face of the earth, but rose up in resistance.

Tolerance, mutual respect, regret, an accommodation with the right to several views as to what really happened in the past, and responsibility should help us to avoid ever rasing our hand again against our own people, and against our own brothers. Your appeals for tolerance and mutual respect, directed to all people of good will, give us support and encouragement in these our endeavours.

Your Holiness,
I welcome you here among us. You bring to us your mission of peace, reconciliation and respect. I trust that you will feel the welcome we offer to you and have a pleasant stay with us, while we will take great joy in your presence here among us, and especially in celebrating your birthday as the symbolic day of your mission. May I offer you a common greeting from all Slovenia, and of course our very best wishes!