"Technical progress does not coincide with the moral growth of people; indeed, without ethical principles, science, technique and politics can be used as it happened and as it still unfortunately happens not for the good, but for the evil of individuals and mankind". It was repeated this afternoon by the Pope, as he spoke to Rome’s university students for the traditional Christmas meeting in Saint Peter’s Basilica. Going back to the contents of his recent second encyclical, "Spe salvi", Benedict XVI "ideally" handed it over to the young and "to the whole university, school, culture and education world", defining the subject of hope as "particularly befitting to the young" and suggesting them to reflect above all on the part of the encyclical that concern hope in the modern age (see no. 16-23, editor’s note). "Man is not just the product of some given economic or social conditions", recalled the Pope, mentioning "the fundamental mistake" of modernity, in particular Marxist-style materialism, as written by Benedict XVI at no. 21 of his encyclical. "In the XVII century said the Pope , Europe experienced a true epoch-making change which resulted in the spreading of a mentality, according to which human progress is the result of science and technique, while the task of faith would only be the salvation of the soul" (continued). ” “
