To the President of Ivory Coast and to the Nation (10 May 1980)

Saturday, May 10, 1980, in Abidjan, the Holy Father addressed the President and Nation of Côte d'Ivoire*, to whom he opened his heart on “the permanent values ​​which constitute the true wealth of man.”

Mister President,

1. On February 2, receiving the members of the communities of the various African nations residing in Rome, who were introduced to me by the Ambassador of Côte d'Ivoire, I had the joy of announcing to them an upcoming trip to "honor and encouraging the whole of Africa” [ 1 ]. The Lord made a very dear wish come true. And this journey ends with the Ivorian stage, proposed with great courtesy by Your Excellency at the same time as by my brother bishops.

At this memorable moment, before the Ivorian people present here through those to whom they have given a mandate to guide them, I want to express my deep gratitude for the warm and friendly welcome extended to me.

Solemnity and perfect organization do not exclude simplicity or spontaneity. Allow me, therefore, above all to open my heart to the people of this country, which you offer me the happiness of visiting. I greet her with affection. How would she feel remote from the Pope in any way, even though he could not go to every department, to every town, to every family to bring his words of blessing there? Yes, I really want to greet all Ivorians and all Ivorians. Some Christians have already gone to Rome to pray there at the tombs of Peter and Paul. Others, who do not share the same faith, have also had the opportunity to visit the center of Christianity. I come in these days to accomplish my own pilgrimage on African soil,

2. Your Excellency will allow me to tell him of my admiration for this People who, on the threshold of the third millennium, capable of assuming their own destiny, strive to combine in a happy and suitable synthesis the possibilities of which provided with Providence, the traditional genius inherited from the ancestors and the concern for the common good.

The task is not easy, to which the leaders of the Republic are working tenaciously. It is a question of creating an orderly whole, where nothing is denied of what the past has been able to produce best, while drawing from modernity what can contribute to elevating man, his dignity, his honor. Apart from that, there is no real development or real human or social progress. Nor is there justice. We would risk building a facade, something fragile therefore, where multiple inequalities would be verified, not to mention this inequality within man himself, who would grant more value to the search for the superficial that is seen, than to that of the essential which is its hidden strength.

The danger is great, in fact, of simply wanting to copy or import what is done elsewhere, for the sole reason that it comes from so-called “advanced” countries: but advanced towards what? How advanced are they? Doesn't Africa also have, perhaps more than other continents that were once her guardians, a sense of the inner things called upon to determine the life of man? How I would like to contribute to defending it from invasions of all kinds, from visions of man and society which are partial or materialistic, and which threaten Africa's road towards a truly human and African development!

Addressing this question, the Second Vatican Council measured its full complexity. Indeed, he noted that “a very large number of our contemporaries have great difficulty in discerning permanent values; at the same time, they do not know how to harmonize them with recent discoveries. A concern seizes them, and they wonder with a mixture of hope and anguish about the current evolution of the world. This challenges man; better, it obliges him to answer”[ 2 ].

Such a problem is not unique to Africa, far from it. And yet, I do not think I am mistaken in supposing that it frequently nourishes the reflections of the statesmen of this great continent, that it is perhaps the most fundamental problem that they have to face, those who, through their choices, through the directions they are led to take in establishing development plans, lay the foundations for the future of their respective peoples. It takes wisdom, a lot of wisdom, lucidity also to make the necessary adjustments based on experience. The reputation that Your Excellency has acquired in this area, both in your country and internationally, gives grounds for confidence in the future of the Ivorian people.

3. Quoting a passage from the texts of the Council, I mentioned a moment ago the permanent values ​​which constitute the true wealth of man. Consideration of these values ​​and, if one can use the term, putting them into practice, seems to me to guard against everything that in our time is factitious or the consequence of easyness. They alone lead man to build on rock[ 3 ].

One could multiply the examples drawn from the same Conciliar Constitution, which wanted to judge in the light of God's plan what is lived by our contemporaries, and to link it to the divine source. This is a subject that I consider so vital that I wanted to deal with it at length in New York, before the 34th General Assembly of the United Nations.

It can be summed up in a lapidary formula: the primacy of spiritual and moral values ​​over material or economic values. "The primacy of the values ​​of the spirit - I said then - defines the meaning of earthly and material goods as well as the way of using them...". It also contributes “to ensuring that material development, technical development and the development of civilization are at the service of what constitutes man, in other words that they allow him full access to truth, to moral development , to the possibility of fully enjoying the goods of the culture we inherit, and to the multiplication of these goods through our creativity”[ 4 ].

We must therefore continue to reflect and work along these lines if we want to meet the real needs of humanity, and particularly the real needs of Africa, which is in the process of acquiring the dimension it is due to scale of the planet. Africa is still looking for itself a little. She holds the keys to her future. I wish her to deepen this fundamental theme so that the spiritual and moral values ​​imprint on her an indelible character, alone worthy of herself.

4. The Church, for her part, has no direct competence in the political or economic sphere. It intends to remain faithful to its spiritual mission, and fully respect the specific responsibilities of rulers. The moral support that it can offer to those who are in charge of the earthly city is explained, and justified, by the desire to serve man, by reminding him of what makes his greatness, or by awakening him to realities that transcend this world.

I particularly welcome here the support it brings in Côte d'Ivoire, through its presence in schools and in intellectual circles, to the great national education and training enterprise, which has already been able to provide the population an enviable cultural level in more ways than one.

But his help would mainly reach the conscience of Ivorian men and women, to show them their dignity and help them make good use of it. Its support would also like to facilitate effective justice, with a greater concern for the poor, the marginalized, the little ones, the migrants, in a word, those who are often left behind.

Isn't the meaning of God also the meaning of man, of neighbour? Doesn't it imply honesty, integrity of citizens, willingness to share with the least favored, rather than a race for money or honours? Thus, by being concerned with the concrete fate of the populations, the Church intends to work effectively for the promotion of Ivorians, and she hopes to contribute her stone to the ever more solid construction of the Ivorian Fatherland.

5. It is the success of the effort to which all your compatriots are invited that I wholeheartedly wish, Mr. President, by thanking you once again for your kindness, by presenting my respectful greetings to all the high personalities who surround us , and praying fervently for the Ivorian people. May God make this stay fruitful and fulfill the hopes we placed there!

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 [ 1 ] L'Osservatore Romano , February 3, 1980.

 [ 2 ] Gaudium et Spes , n. 4 § 5.

 [ 3 ] Cf. Mt 7, 24-25.

 [ 4 ] No. 14.

*AAS 72 (1980) p. 530-533.

Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II , vol. III, 1 pp. 1308-1312.

L'Osservatore Romano 12-13.5.1980 p.3.

L'Osservatore Romano. Weekly edition in French n.22 p.10.

© Copyright 1980 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

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