"Catholicism has represented a keystone in the Canadian society building. But nowadays we have faced, and are still facing, substantial changes." This is what Pope Benedict XVI said today in an audience with Anne Leathy, the new Canadian ambassador to the Holy See who presented her credentials to him. "The signs of this revolution are visible in different fields. Sometimes they are so worrisome that we may ask if they represent a degradation of the human being concept," especially concerning "the promotion and defence of human life and family based on natural marriage." Hence, the wish that a "culture of life" could be "brought back into the personal and social existence of Canadians." Then the Pope expressed the need to "redefine the concept of freedom exercise, which is too often invoked to justify any sort of action." It is more and more common to see freedom and its exercise as an absolute value, an inviolable individual right, yet forgetting its divine origin and collective dimension," he added. According to this interpretation, only the individual can decide on the quality and purpose of life, death and marriage."
