ADDRESS OF PAUL VI
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF UGANDA*

Wednesday, 10 September 1975

Mr President,

As we receive today Your Excellency and the members of your entourage, we intend to give yet another attestation of our respect, esteem and love for Uganda.

We have had many opportunities to do this recently: we have had the repeated pleasure of speaking to the various pilgrim groups who have come from your country to this city of Rome, and we have often evoked our memorable visit to Uganda and the special bonds of affection that join us to the Ugandan people. And our voice has been loud and clear in exhorting the pilgrims to be strong in their religious faith and its consequences, which are to render service as exemplary citizens and to love their brethren. We are very pleased to have these pilgrimages and we are indeed grateful for the assistance that has been generously rendered in making them possible. And you may be sure that our exhortation is today and always a message of brotherhood and peace, a call for love and service.

Just a few days ago we were pleased to receive Your Excellency’s reply with regard to some recent events concerning Catholic missionaries in Uganda, assuring us that foreign religious personnel would always be welcome in your country, as well as their contribution towards the development-both spiritual and material-of the local communities.

We are happy to repeat what we have already expressed in writhing to Your Excellency: namely, that the Catholics in Uganda, and the foreign missionaries who assist them, are ever ready to collaborate, within the limits of their possibilities, with other Christian and non-Christian bodies for the welfare of all the people of your nation. Moreover, we look forward to the day when, thanks also to the untiring efforts of the missionaries, it will be possible to hand over the direction of Church activities completely to the sons of Uganda, in whom we are pleased to reiterate our full confidence.

On this auspicious occasion we willingly invoke again upon Uganda the choicest blessings of the Almighty.

*AAS 67 (1975), p.536-537.

Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, vol. XIII, p.914-915.

L’Osservatore Romano, 11.9.1975, p.1.

ORa n.38 p.2.