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Pope urges Germany to pursue social ideals
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Sixty years after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pope Benedict XVI urged Germany to continue to build a free and humanitarian country. The German constitution, signed in May 1949, called for respect for human dignity, marriage and the family, and it helped contribute to the peaceful development of Germany over the past six decades, he said. The pope spoke at the end of a Dec. 4 classical music concert hosted for the pontiff and guests by German President Horst Kohler. The evening concert in the Sistine Chapel featured the Christmas Oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by the Augsburger Domsingknaben Chamber Choir and Munich's chamber orchestra. The concert commemorated the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Federal Republic of Germany and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The pope, who is German, said the wall was a "border of death" that "divided our country and forcibly separated men, women, families, neighbors and friends." The fall of the wall in November 1989 ushered in a new and unexpected era of freedom, he said, "after a long and painful night of violence and oppression from a totalitarian system that, in the end, led to nihilism and an emptying of spirit."
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