Here is a translation of the address Prime Minister François Fillon of France gave today during the ceremony to bid farewell to Benedict XVI at the end of his four-day trip to Paris and Lourdes.The ceremony was held at the Tarbes-Lourdes Pyrénées Airport.
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Very Holy Father,
These four days spent among us will remain in the spirit of many Frenchmen as a great and beautiful moment of sharing -- a sharing of emotions, reflection and hope. Your coming has inspired popular enthusiasm.
From Notre Dame of Paris to the esplanade of Les Invalides, from Les Invalides to Lourdes, your goodness spread over an immense crowd, joyful and attentive to your message. Our fellow citizens of all ages, social milieux, origins and confession gathered with fervor with the Catholic community.
Your visit was for France the confirmation of a long friendship.
In the plane that brought you to Orly on Friday, you expressed your personal attachment to our language, our culture and our intellectual tradition. You know that this tradition is nourished by constant debates, propositions and disputes. At the Élysée Palace, you contributed to the reflection that the republic has been engaged in, for two centuries, on relations with the Churches.
You reminded that the fundamental separation of the Church and the state does not prevent them either from dialoguing or from being mutually enriched.
At the Collège des Bernardins, surrounded by representatives of the world of culture, your intellectual brilliance gave your message of hope and vigilance universal scope.
You invited us to undertake the path of reason and of the word to progress in humanity and spirituality.
You placed our civilization on guard regarding its materialist weaknesses, its warlike urges, its fanaticisms.
You appealed to humanist Europe and to its Christian heritage.
Your exigency has deepened our look on the human condition, on its ethical duties and its mystery.
Very Holy Father,
It is the republic -- that of believers of all confessions, but also of those who doubt, seek or do not believe -- that has been invited to a collective meditation. And this meditation is in the image of an open and reflective secularism.
The republic, profoundly secular, respects the existence of the religious fact. She appreciates the role of the Christian tradition in her history and her cultural and immaterial heritage.
I believe that those who listened to you were gripped by a very sincere affection for you, and that they greeted the simplicity with which you invited each one to turn toward the better part of themselves.
France sees you leave with emotion and gratitude.
In the midst of crises and anxieties, your visit was a moment of peace and fraternity.
In the midst of international tensions, it was the occasion to recall our common opposition to fanaticisms, violence and discriminations.
At the dawn of a new century, your visit invites us to cast out our fears and mobilize the best of our humanity in the service of the future.
Very Holy Father, the French are pleased to have thus contributed to entertain a shared hope with you.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Sotto Voce
(Source: Zenit)