Speech by CDI President Casini addressed to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI (IT)

taken from http://www.cdi-idc.com/dbimages/pdf/casini_discorso_papa_en.pdf

Your Holiness,
In the name of the Centrist Democrat International, I should like to
express my deepest gratitude for the extraordinary opportunity that you
have bestowed by receiving us here today in Castel Gandolfo.
We are imbued with a sincere yearning for freedom, and deeply
committed to defending the dignity of man, the right to life, and the rights
of the weak, be they women, children or ethnic and religious minorities, in
the face of all forms of repression and violence.
The more than one hundred political parties that we represent are
conscious that the times we live in are replete with incongruities.
In difficult areas of the world such as Asia, we are battling religious
fundamentalism in defence of the right of each and everyone to profess
their religious affiliations and beliefs, while fully respecting an effective
dialogue between religions.
In Africa, we are engaged in building a just society based on a
commitment to combating poverty and misery.
In Latin America, we fight a daily battle of resistance against
populist politics that offer facile and misleading solutions to the
exploitation of the weakest members of society.
Meanwhile, here in Europe, the most industrialised and advanced
area of the world, we seek to counter the insidious threat of relativism,
which, by equally subtle methods, seeks to subjugate the dignity of the
human person. The weakening of our sense of conscience, the absence of powerful
motivating ideals, the crisis of fundamental institutions such as the family,
the permanent threat to the right to life for all, from the moment of
conception to advanced old age, and the ascendancy of a science that
knows no ethics or boundaries and manipulates and humiliates man, are all
pieces in a mosaic that, were it ever completed, would spell out the
destruction of western civilisation.
As you reminded us in your writings, a misguided conception of
freedom currently prevails whereby people no longer accept moral
considerations that do not tally with their own calculations, with the result
that the unrestrained expansion of freedom ends up by destroying freedom
itself.
Holy Father, your living magisterium is a simple, yet also an intense
and clear reminder of the centrality of mankind and of the ethic of
responsibility, as well as the ultimate reference point for the Christian
identity.
In espousing these values, we today confirm our pledge to opposing
all policies that threaten mankind.
We know that the secularism of public institutions and States cannot
suppress the innate longing in humans for that which is religious. There is
no such thing as healthy secularism without God and religion!
In carrying out our actions, we find comfort and encouragement in
the testimony of the Catholic Church and, above all, in your teachings.
Your Holiness, through simplicity and powerful acts, you enjoin us
to be courageous.
This is a commitment we shall not forsake, and we ask you for your
support and look to your words to guide us in our political action.