We greatly enjoy the fact that when for the first time speaking officially here in Poland, on Wawel Hill, Pope Francis to a certain degree recapitulated the fundamentals of our project “Green Lungs of Poland – the Breath of History, the Waft of the Present”. He talked about the lungs of the East and the West, the lungs Europe breathing, about memory of our difficult history, about forming of our identity based on the Christian values during 1050 years, about the development of civilization and human heritage we proudly take together with us in future.
We would like you to read the fragment of the speech of Pope Francis.
This is my first visit to central-eastern Europe and I am happy to begin with Poland, the homeland of the unforgettable Saint John Paul II, originator and promoter of the World Youth Days. Pope John Paul liked to speak of a Europe that breathes with two lungs. The ideal of a new European humanism is inspired by the creative and coordinated breathing of these two lungs, together with the shared civilization that has its deepest roots in Christianity.
Memory is the hallmark of the Polish people. I was always impressed by Pope John Paul’s vivid sense of history. Whenever he spoke about a people, he started from its history, in order to bring out its wealth of humanity and spirituality. A consciousness of one’s own identity, free of any pretensions to superiority, is indispensable for establishing a national community on the foundation of its human, social, political, economic and religious heritage, and thus inspiring social life and culture in a spirit of constant fidelity to tradition and, at the same time, openness to renewal and the future. In this sense, you recently celebrated the 1,050thanniversary of the Baptism of Poland. That was indeed a powerful moment of national unity, which reaffirmed that harmony, even amid a diversity of opinions, is the sure path to achieving the common good of the entire Polish people.