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Vatican City, Vatican, 13th
September 2004 (CNA) -
On Saturday September
11, Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical
Council for Culture, stressed the “pressing urgency” of
cooperation among cultures towards the goal of world
peace, during an event entitled “In Memory of Spetember
11 – Dialogue for Peace.”
The cardinal said that he
was "deeply moved" to participate in an event that
"brings us together in the name of dialogue for peace
... in memory of September 11, a date that tragically
marked our memory and continues to mark our memory and
our common history."
"September 11," he said,
"represents the beginning of a new phase of cruelty and
lack of humanity, characterized by the killing of
innocent people. We were all horrified by the images of
the children in Beslan. ... It seems that humanity has
regressed by centuries or millennia in recent months and
days."
After recalling the
kidnapping of two young Italian volunteers in Baghdad,
which "like that of so many other civilians, has no
justification," he said: "We cannot accept this
regression of humanity on the part of these cruel and
heartless people, for whom men and women do not exist
but are only objects to use and to kill without any
respect for the sacred nature of human life.”
“We cannot become
accustomed to this way of living, to this loss of the
meaning of human life, of its sacredness and intangible
nature.”
"This evening," he
concluded, "we want to reaffirm that cooperation among
peoples, religions and cultures is not just a secondary
decision but a pressing urgency, a true necessity: we
are all called to work together as a human family to
achieve world peace."
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