By God’s will being the successor of Saint Peter in the See of Rome, I desire to serve with equal love and equal dedication both to the universal Church in her universal community and to all nations and peoples, every man. However, I do not have to hide this special relationship that unites me and which I deeply feel with the Church and the nation from which I came, with all my compatriots, both living in my homeland and outside it. I rejoice, therefore, when, among the multilingual crowds who come to Rome and meet the Pope, our mother tongue also resounds, and I must say from my own experience that, thanks be to God, it is heard here more and more often and louder.
Taking into account what today’s meeting brings, the initiative from which it grows and its fruits, in a certain sense it could be called a “harvest festival” meeting. In fact, you give me the gift of the heart of many, so many Poles, and people who find in themselves a connection with the “old country”, with the Church and with Rome, as well as the gift of friends from other nationalities who wanted to participate in this initiative. You give me the Home at via Cassia to serve the Church in Poland, the Homeland, the Polish diaspora abroad, compatriots, but also, in a sense, the entire Church and Christian culture throughout the world.
(Audience on the occasion of the dedication of the Polish Home. Vatican, November 7, 1981)
“Do not stop in this good work – Papal Speeches to the John Paul II Foundation”
John Paul II Foundation & Center for Documentation and Study of the Pontificate of John Paul II, Rome 2012
