APOSTOLIC PILGRIMAGE
OF HIS HOLINESS PAUL VI
TO WEST ASIA, OCEANIA AND AUSTRALIA

ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER PAUL VI
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA*

Djakarta, Indonesia
Thursday, 3 December 1970

Mister President,

It was with much satisfaction that We accepted your pressing invitation to stop at Djakarta. In spite of the length of this journey it was Our wish to do so, as a sign of Our esteem for your numerous people, who are so dear to Us, and as a mark of appreciation of the friendly relations established on an official level between the Indonesian nation and the Holy See. To you and to the members of your Government We express Our warm gratitude for the gracious welcome We have received in your country.

We also wished to express to the Indonesian people both Our appreciation of their dynamism and their desire for progress, and also Our respect for their spiritual traditions. Is not belief in one God inscribed at the head of the five basic principles of your national life?

Because of Our office We have felt it Our duty to extend a special greeting to those who share Our faith, the Catholics of Indonesia. Under the guidance of their bishops and of the Indonesian clergy, and with the assistance elf worthy missionaries, the Catholics of this country lead their lives, faithful both to the Christian principles they share with all their brothers in the faith throughout the world and also to the values that belong to their own national culture. They are sons and daughters of Indonesia-as loyal as all the others-anxious to build, along with their fellow-countrymen, a nation able to ensure for all men conditions of life which befit their dignity as human beings. While the Catholic Church asks to be able to spread her faith freely and to see her faithful free to fulfil their religious duties, within the framework of the institutions set up by the State, she desires at the same time to give clear expression to her confidence in and her admiration for the human and religious destiny of the Indonesian people. It is because she earnestly wishes to make her contribution to the attainment of an integral development of the whole man and of every man that she offers her services through her various social institutions (Cfr. Populorum progressio, 42). Accordingly, although Church and State are not situated on the same plane-since the State pursues aims belonging to the temporal order, while the Church is concerned above all with spiritual uplifting-a happy collaboration between the two is possible and desirable, for the activities of both are complementary and work together for man’s full self-realization in every respect.

We pray Almighty God to bless you, your collaborators in the leadership of this immense country, and the whole Indonesian people. Sekian dan terima kasih.

*AAS 63 (1970), p.75-76.

Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, vol. VIII, p.1377-1378.

L’Osservatore Romano, 4.12.1970, p.2.

ORa n.51 p.7, 8.