Archbishop of Valencia urges Catholics to support Pope “without fear”

Sep 20, 2006 / 22:00 pm

During his remarks at the opening of the school year at the Catholic University of Valencia, Archbishop Agustin Garcia-Gasco exhorted Catholics this week to remain “firm, united to the Pope, without fear.”

According to the AVAN news agency, Archbishop Garcia-Gasco, the grand chancellor of the university, said, “We are receiving pure and transparent wisdom” from the Holy Father, adding that “from the Pope and from the Gospel we learn tolerance in the face of intolerance; freedom in the face of submission; humanism in the face of fanaticism; conscience in the face of violence.”

Likewise, the archbishop noted that “in Benedict XVI our age is again experiencing, in an exemplary way, that here on this earth there is nothing more valuable than a humanity that is free, independent and spiritual.”

The archbishop explained that “reason open to God brings about peace and understanding between cultures, rejects violence, and promotes true progress and the freedom of peoples,” although “in too many settings a culture is being spread that seeks to disregard God and considers that reason should not be concerned with knowing Him.”

Later in his discourse, Archbishop Garcia-Gasco recalled that “the great task of the university is to constantly rediscover this scope of reason,” and thus he invited “our interlocutors to discover this great ‘logos.’”

He warned that as soon as religions “resort to violence” to bring out uniformity, “they abandon the terrain of what is religious in order to enter into that of violence and brutality.  Even the most legitimate of truths, if it is imposed on others through violence, becomes a grave sin against God,” he said.