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                               VIS-Press releases

VATICAN LIBRARY: HISTORICAL MEMORY OF UNIVERSAL CHURCH

VATICAN CITY, 11 NOV 2010 (VIS) - The Holy Father has written a Letter to
Cardinal Raffaele Farina S.D.B., archivist and librarian of Holy Roman Church,
to mark the reopening of the Vatican Apostolic Library and the inauguration of
an exhibition entitled: "Knowing the Vatican Library. A History Open to the
Future".

"Pre-eminent location of the universal Church's historical memory, home to
venerable examples of the manuscript tradition of the Bible, the Vatican
Library yet has another reason justifying the attention and concern of Popes.
Since its origins it has always shown an unmistakeable openness, truly
'Catholic' and universal, to all the beauty and goodness ... which humankind
has produced over the course of the centuries".

"Nothing of what is truly human is foreign to the Church which, for this
reason, has always sought, gathered and conserved - with a continuity that
knows few equals - the finest results of man's efforts to raise himself above
the purely material plane as he searches, either consciously or unconsciously,
for the Truth".

"The Vatican Library is not, then, a theological or prevalently religious
library. Faithful to is humanistic origins it is, by vocation, open to all
things human, and thus it is remains at the service of culture. ... Also
through the efforts of this institution, the Church intends today - as she did
five centuries ago - to serve all mankind, inscribing this particular ministry
into the broader picture of the essential ministry that makes her Church: the
community that evangelises and saves".
MESS/VIS 20101111 (260)

SUMMARY

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