ADDRESS OF PAUL VI TO A GROUP FROM
THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CHURCH OF DALLAS

Saturday, 12 June 1971

Dear friends in Christ,

We are most pleased today to receive so large a group from the Southern Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. This is a striking and perhaps unique illustration of a new spirit of friendship among those who call on the name of Christ.

You are on your way to those Holy Places sanctified by the Lord himself, which it was Our privilege to visit not so long ago. We are likewise happy that you stop at Rome, which is also a holy place, hallowed by the blood of martyrs-a place of pilgrimage since New Testament times. Some of the Sacred Books of that Testament were written here, and the great document of our faith in justification and sanctification was addressed to the infant Church of Rome.

We are pleased to encounter, under such a distinguished leader as Dr. Harry Criswel, members of a Christian communion which, since the foundation of your great nation, has played so full a part in the development of evangelization and Christian education, and which led so many of the pioneers westwards in more recent times.

May this encounter for which We thank you warmly be an effective sign of a new effort at mutual understanding and cooperation.

As a pledge of this Our hope, We invoke upon all of you the choicest blessings of God.