(ZENIT News / Rome, 06.10.2024).
- We offer the English translation of the speech delivered by the Pope in the Senate Hall of the Capitol in Rome on the occasion of his visit to the mayor. *** Lord Mayor, Assessors and Councillors of the Municipality of Rome, Distinguished Authorities, Dear friends! I thank the Lord Mayor for the welcome invitation and the kind expressions he addressed to me; and I thank the President of the Capitoline Assembly for her words of welcome. I greet the Councillors of the Municipality, the Representatives of the Government, the other Authorities present and all the citizens of Rome.
In coming back to visit you, I feel sentiments of gratitude and joy. I come to meet you and, through you, the entire city, which almost from its birth, around 2,800 years ago, has had a clear and constant vocation of universality. For the Christian faithful, this role is not the fruit of chance, but corresponded to a providential plan.
Ancient Rome, due to its legal development and its organizational capacities, and the construction throughout the centuries of solid and lasting institutions, became a beacon to which many peoples turned for stability and security. This process allowed it to be a radiating centre of civilization and to welcome people from all parts of the world and integrate them into its civil and social life, even to the point of having not a few of them assume the highest magistracies of the state. This ancient Roman culture , which undoubtedly experie.