(b.May 18, 1920), whose given name was Karol Wojtyla, has held the position of Pope since 1978. Arriving at Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, on August 12, 1993, Pope John Paul stated:
The best tradition of your love presumes respect for those who cannot defend themselves.3801
Later that day, at Regis University, in the presence of President Bill Clinton, Pope John Paul II addressed the crowd:
The inalienable dignity of every human being and the rights which flow from that dignity—in the first place the right to life and the defense of life—as well as the well-being and full human development of individuals and peoples, are at the heart of the church’s message and action in the world. … No country, not even the most powerful, can endure if it deprives its own children of this essential good.3802
It is he, Jesus Christ, the true life who gives hope and purpose to our earthly existence, opens our minds and hearts to the goodness and beauty of the world around us.3803
I greet each one with sincere friendship, in spite of divisions among Christians, ‘all those justified by faith through baptism are incorporated into Christ … brothers and sisters in the Lord.’3804
Following his address on the “moral crisis,” the Pontiff gave President Clinton a Gutenberg Bible.
On Thursday night, August 12, 1993, in an address to 90,000 young people in Denver’s Mile High Stadium, Pope John Paul II declared:
Jesus has called each of you to Denver for a purpose. You must live these days in such a way that, when the time comes to return home, each of you will have a clearer idea of what Christ expects of you.3805
During the Saturday night prayer vigil, August 14, 1993, at Cherry Creek State Park, the Pope spoke to nearly a quarter of a million people, warning:
There is spreading an anti-life mentality—an attitude of hostility to life in the womb and life in its last stages. Precisely when science and medicine are achieving a greater capacity to safeguard health and life, the threats against life are becoming more insidious. Abortion and euthanasia—the actual killing of another human being—are hailed as ‘rights’ and solutions to ‘problems’—an individual’s or society’s.3806
On Sunday, August 15, 1993, Pope John Paul II addressed a crowd of over 375,000 people from 70 different countries in a Mass celebrated at Cherry Creek State Park, Colorado, as a part of “World Youth Day.” With Vice-President Al Gore in attendance, the Pope exclaimed:
A ‘culture of death’ seeks to impose itself on our desire to live, and live to the full. … In our own century, as at no other time in history, the ‘culture of death’ has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: genocide, ‘final solutions,’ ‘ethnic cleansings’ and massive taking of lives of human beings even before they are born, or before they reach the natural point of death. …
In much of contemporary thinking, any reference to a ‘law’ guaranteed by the Creator is absent. There remains only each individual’s choice of this or that objective as convenient or useful in a given set of circumstances. No longer is anything considered intrinsically ‘good’ and ‘universally binding.’ …
Vast sectors of society are confused about what is right and what is wrong and are at the mercy of those with the power to ‘create’ opinion and impose it on others. …
The family especially is under attack. And the sacred character of Human Life is denied. Naturally, the weakest members of society are the most at risk. The unborn, children, the sick, the handicapped, the old, the poor and unemployed, the immigrant and refugee. …
Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public places. … This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is a time to preach it from the rooftops. …
You must feel the full urgency of the task. Woe to you if you do not succeed in defending life. The church needs your energies, your enthusiasm, your youthful ideas, in order to make the Gospel of Life penetrate the fabric of society, transforming people’s hearts and the structures of society in order to create a civilization of true justice and love.3807
On August 15, 1993, in his farewell address from Stapleton International Airport, Denver, Colorado, Pope John Paul II reiterated:
The ‘culture of life’ means respect for nature and protection of God’s work of creation. … In a special way, it means respect for Human Life from the first moment of conception until its natural end.3808
In his 11th papal encyclical, entitled “Evangelium Vitae”—“Gospel of Life,” issued April of 1995, Pope John Paul II stated:
Broad sectors of public opinion justify certain crimes against life in the name of individual freedom, and on this basis they claim not only exemption from punishment but even authorization by the state. …
The fact that legislation in many countries, perhaps even departing from basic principles of their constitutions, has determined not to punish these practices against life, and even to make them altogether legal, is both a disturbing symptom and a significant cause of grave moral decline. … 3809
Pope John Paul II continued his papal letter of April 1995, expressing:
The mere possibility of harming, attacking or actually denying life in these circumstances is completely foreign to the religious and cultural way of thinking of the people of God. …
Whoever attacks human life in some way attacks God himself. …
[The unborn] would never be made human if it were not human already. …
Politicians cannot separate the realm of private conscience from that of public conduct.3810
Evangelist Billy Graham lauded the Pope’s letter as:
A forceful and thoughtful defense of the sacredness of human life in the face of the modern world’s reckless march toward violence and needless death.3811
On Sunday, October 8, 1995, to a crowd of nearly 50,000 people at Oriole Park in Camden Yards, Baltimore, Maryland, Pope John Paul II stated:
Democracy cannot be sustained without a shared commitment to certain moral truths about the human person and the human community. … Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do as we ought. …
Every moment is our opportunity to model ourselves on Jesus Christ—to allow the power of the Gospel to transform our personal lives and our service to others, according to the spirit of the Beatitudes. …
Always be guided by the truth—by the truth about God who created and redeemed us, and by the truth about the human person, made in the image and likeness of God and destined for a glorious fulfillment in the Kingdom to come. Always be convincing witnesses to the truth.3812
On Sunday, October 8, 1995, at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport with Vice-President Al Gore, Pope John Paul admonished America once more before his departure:
At the center of the moral vision of your founding documents is the recognition of the rights of the human person and especially respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life in all conditions and at all stages of development. I say to you again, America, in the light of your own tradition: love life, cherish life, defend life, from conception to natural death.3813