From The Living Church-
On Oct. 2, as Pope Benedict XVI welcomed the United States’ new ambassador to the Holy See, he also took the opportunity to reiterate Roman Catholic teaching about the sanctity of human life.
The pope welcomed Miguel H. Díaz, who previously served as professor of theology at St. John’s School of Theology-Seminary in Collegeville, Minn.
“The United States profoundly respects the Holy See as a sovereign entity, as a humanitarian actor, and as a unique moral voice in the world,” Ambassador Díaz said when presenting his credentials to the pope. “The United States and the Holy See have partnered in the cause of noble objectives. Together we have spread peace, supported religious freedom and other human rights, fostered democracy, denounced terrorism, addressed poverty and world hunger, prevented human trafficking, and combated the spread of HIV/AIDS and other terrible diseases.”
Pope Benedict said he was pleased to accept the new ambassador’s credentials, adding that he “[recalled] with pleasure my meeting with President Barack Obama and his family last July, and willingly reciprocate the kind greetings which you bring from him.”
Toward the end of his response, the pope reflected on how the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of life informs all its other teachings on social justice.
“Here I think particularly of the need for a clear discernment with regard to issues touching the protection of human dignity and respect for the inalienable right to life from the moment of conception to natural death, as well as the protection of the right to conscientious objection on the part of health care workers, and indeed all citizens,” the pope said.
“The Church insists on the unbreakable link between an ethics of life and every other aspect of social ethics, for she is convinced that, in the prophetic words of the late Pope John Paul II, ‘a society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized.’ (Evangelium Vitae, 93; cf. Caritas in Veritate, 15).”
Ambassador Díaz, who was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1963, is the author of On Being Human: U.S. Hispanic and Rahnerian Perspectives (Orbis, 2002) and an editor of From the Heart of Our People: Latino/a Explorations in Catholic Systematic Theology (Orbis, 1999).
He holds two graduate degrees from the University of Notre Dame: a master of theology (1992) and a doctor of philosophy in theology (2000). He has taught at St. John’s since 2004. The ambassador is married to Marian K. Díaz, former director of Companions on a Journey at the College of St. Benedict. They have four children.
http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2009/10/6/pope-welcomes-new-us-ambassador
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