Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, once a distant outpost of the pagan world, has become, through the preaching of the Gospel, a beloved and gifted portion of Christ's vineyard.

It is manifestly unjust that a privileged few should continue to accumulate excess goods, squandering available resources, while masses of people are living in conditions of misery at the very lowest level of subsistence.

Give us the grace - When the sacredness of life before birth is attacked, to stand up and proclaim that no one ever has the authority to destroy unborn life.

The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family... The family is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love.

Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom: the resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world's expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the free human being.

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war.

The vocation and mission of the faithful can only be understood in light of a renewed awareness of the Church as sacrament or sign and instrument of intimate union with God, of the unity of the whole of mankind, and of the personal duty to adhere more closely to her.