Vatican City, Nov 22, 2004 / 22:00 pm
Pope John Paul II, on receiving this morning the rector and members of the faculty and staff of the Nicolaus Copernicus University of Torun in Poland who presented him with the title of doctor "honoris causa," reiterated that the university is “called to overcome the contrast, made during the Enlightenment, of truth reached through reason and truth known through faith.”
The Pope accepted the honor “with gratitude…as a sign of dialogue between science and faith in continual development."
“Today we understand ever more” that the truth reached through reason and the truth reached through faith “is the same truth and that it is necessary for men and women not to walk alone but to try to confirm their own intuition through dialogue with others when reaching the truth on their own," said the Pope.
"Only in this way," he continued, "will experts and men of culture be capable of assuming…'the responsibility of truth; to strive towards it, to defend it and to live according to it'."