Homily at the Opening of the Second General Assembly of the Bishops of Latin America
The homily with which Pope Paul VI, on what he called the first visit of a pope to Latin America, opened the conference of bishops whose conclusions are the Medellín documents. He urged social change and rejected hatred and violence as the way to it.
Paul VI spoke to the bishops in Bogotá on Saturday 24 August 1968. He calls his journey the first personal visit of a pope to Latin America, and gives the bishops three directions: spiritual, pastoral and social. In the social part he says that the church cannot stand with systems and structures that conceal and favour grave and oppressive inequalities, praises dioceses that had given land to the poor, and speaks of the church’s vocation to the poverty of Christ. He then says that neither hatred nor violence is the force of Christian charity, and that among the paths to social renewal the bishops can choose neither atheistic Marxism, nor systematic rebellion, nor bloodshed and anarchy.
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- 24 August 1968, firm date