Pope says Baltic countries need solid values or risk instability

Published: 2006-06-23

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Without the traditional values of respect for life, for marriage and for family, people risk placing themselves under "the tyranny of instability," Pope Benedict XVI told bishops from the Baltic nations. The pope met June 23 with the bishops of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia at the end of their "ad limina" visits to Rome to report on the status of their dioceses. Pope Benedict told them their reports highlighted the fact that abortion and the disintegration of families were serious challenges both for the church and society in the three former Soviet republics. The countries, he said, are suffering "from the fragility of conjugal bonds, the plague of abortion and the demographic crisis, from scant attention paid to the transmission of authentic values to one's children, the precariousness of jobs" and mobility that breaks up extended family networks. "A modernity that is not rooted in authentic human values is destined to be dominated by the tyranny of instability" and a widespread sense of being lost, he said.

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