Church's Role in Politics and Life Issues

Thank you for your question.

Um,

I would say that the understanding that the church has of a

separation between church and politics

or church and state,

um, that I didn't cross it,

and that it... I'd invite you to read or reread

Magnifica Humanitas, where I speak about the social doctrine of

the church in the first section, the first couple of chapters, and say

that when the church speaks about defending life, when it speaks

about questions of social doctrine, we're not entering into politics.

We're applying the gospel to people's lives,

and they can be politicians, if you will, on the left or on the right.

Mm, situations where they say, "No, religion should only be in the private

sphere.

Let people do what they want on their own," but that as a state we have to be

separate. By the very fact that, uh, when I went to France,

I went primarily, uh, to preach the

gospel, to preach the good news, to reaffirm

what Jesus Christ himself says when he says, "I am the way

and the truth and the

life," and so to speak the truth that Jesus offers us.

The defense of life is something that, as you all know, the church,

uh, teaches, believes very deeply.

And so

on one h- the one hand, obviously knowing that in France a

law was recently approved, in other countries in Europe as well as

other parts

of the world, there is a lot of debating going on about the

questions of

end-of-life issues.

But being in a place especially like Lourdes, where people are

searching for something much deeper and

understanding that their lives, even in the midst of sickness

or disability or pain of different kinds,

that their life has meaning, the church,

because of Jesus himself, wants to be close to those people and to

affirm the values that, that life itself, I

think, holds for all of us. So, so I would say i- if that's

politics, I did that, but it was not to get involved in French

politics. It was to, to teach what the church really believes.