Non-African missionaries, responding generously to the Lord's call with ardent apostolic zeal, came to share the joy of revelation. Following in their footsteps, Africans are today missionaries on other continents.

Lifting one's gaze to the living God, the guarantor of our freedom and of truth, is a premise for arriving at a new humanity. Nowadays, in a special way, the world needs people capable of proclaiming and bearing witness to God who is love, and consequently the one light which in the end, illumines the darkness of the world and gives us strength to live and work

Our Christian conviction is that Christ is also the messiah of Israel. Certainly it is in the hands of God how and when the unification of Jews and Christians into the people of God will take place.

People from the world's richest countries should be prepared to accept the burden of debt reduction for heavily indebted poor countries, and should urge their leaders to fulfill the pledges made to reduce world poverty, especially in Africa, by the year 2015.

The highest things, the things that really matter, we cannot achieve on our own; we have to accept them as gifts and enter in to the dynamic of the gift, so to speak.

Society as a whole must defend the conceived child's right to life and the true good of the woman who can never, in any circumstances, find fulfilment in the decision to abort.

Deeply saddened by the news of the terrorist attacks in central London, the Holy Father offers his fervent prayers for the victims and for all those who mourn.