REMARKS OF THE HOLY FATHER
AT THE END OF THE ANNUAL LENTEN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES

Saturday, 18 March 2000

"On behalf of each of you I also thank Archbishop François Xavier Nguyên Van Thuân, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, who, with simplicity and spiritual inspiration, led us in reflection on our vocation as witnesses to Gospel hope at the beginning of the third millennium. He himself was a witness to the Cross in the long years of his imprisonment in Viêt Nam and he frequently recounted to us facts and episodes of his sufferings in prison, thereby strenthening us in the consoling certainty that when everything collapses around us and perhaps even within us, Christ remains our unfailing support. We are grateful to Archbishop Van Thuân — in prison he was merely Mr Van Thuân — for his witness, which is particularly significant in this Jubilee Year."

-Excerpt from The Holy See