“A
very focused speech and one that was listened to with great care”, says
Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, Noel Fahey in his reflections on Pope
Benedict XVI’s address to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy
See.
One day after Pope Benedict’s ‘state of the world’
address, Ambassador Fahey speaking to Emer McCarthy notes the papal
overview focused very much on religious freedom and “issues of very
direct concern to the Church”.
“It has less of a broader kind of
comment that the Holy Father sometimes makes in these kind of
addresses”, he says.
“This is not surprising in view of events in the
Middle East and his World Day of Peace message on January 1. He was very
direct, he made it clear that Catholics, Christians are entitled to
exactly the same human rights in Muslim countries as the Muslim
population”.
The Ambassador, who previously served as the Irish
government representative to the United States of America also adds; “I
find it very interesting, I thought, that he included both the issue of
religious freedom where Catholics are directly persecuted in the same
address as the treatment of religion in Europe and North America.”
SIC: VR/INT'L