 Holiness, after an audience with you five years ago in Vatican City, I met a group of American priests and seminarians who were studying in Rome. When I happen to mention my hope that one day you would return to the United States, and that perhaps this time your visit would extend to the south and the west, when I mentioned this, those seminarians broke into applause. Today, your Holiness, you begin just such a return visit, and today all America applauds. In a document of the Second Vatican Council that you helped to draft, it is written, in language intelligible to every generation, the church should be able to answer the ever-recurring questions which men ask about the meaning of this present life and of the life to come. In language intelligible to every generation, certainly no one can speak with greater force to our own generation than you yourself. In Poland, you experience Nazism and Communism. As Pope, you suffered a terrorist attack that nearly claimed your life. Still you proclaim that the central message of our own time, that the central message of all time, is not hatred, but love. During your papacy you have taken this message to some sixty-eight countries. You have celebrated mass in the ancient capitals of Europe. You have spoken words of truth and comfort on the African savannah. You have visited new churches on the islands of the Pacific. You have addressed vast gatherings throughout South America and the Far East. Now you have come back to the United States, the nation of citizens from all nations. If I might just interject something, Your Holiness, I know that in your travels you have made it a point to speak to people in their own language. Well, here in Miami I have a suspicion that you will find many in your audience eager to hear you speak the beautiful language of Spain. But in this, the very month of your visit, we in the United States will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of our Constitution. That document says a great deal about the fundamental values in which we Americans believe. In the words of the distinguished Catholic philosopher Jacques-Maritain, the founding fathers were neither metaphysicians nor theologians, but their philosophy of life and their political philosophy, their notion of natural law and of human rights, were permeated with concepts worked out by Christian reason and backed up by an unshakable religious feeling. From the first, then, our nation embraced the belief that the individual is sacred and that as God himself respects human liberty, so too must the state. In freedom we Americans have in these 200 years built a great country, a country of goodness and abundance. Indeed, Your Holiness, it is precisely because we believe in freedom, because we respect the liberty of the individual in the economic as well as the political sphere that we have achieved such prosperity. We are justly proud of the Marshall Plan, whose 40th anniversary was celebrated in Europe earlier this year. In Europe and elsewhere, we continue to place our might on the side of human dignity. In Latin America and Asia, we are supporting the expansion of human freedom, in particular the powerful movement toward democracy, yet we Americans admit freely to our shortcomings. As you exhort us, we will listen with all our hearts. We yearn to make this good land better still. In Florida and South Carolina, in Louisiana and Texas, in Arizona, California and Michigan, tens of thousands of Americans, more than 50 million Catholics will greet you. They do great works, America's Catholics in the name of their church. Here in the United States, American Catholics put their faith into action in countless ways, maintaining parochial schools that give underprivileged children in our inner cities the chance to receive a good education, supporting the AIDS hospices established by Mother Teresa's missionaries of charity, and perhaps simply helping to put on a fundraising dinner for the local parish. A broad American Catholics likewise seek to translate their faith into deeds, whether supporting missionaries in distant lands, or helping America's Knights of Columbus restore the facade of St. Peter's in Rome. But it will not be Catholics alone who greet you. Protestants of every denomination, Jews, Muslims, even many with no defined faith at all. Americans of every kind and degree or belief will wish your holiness well, responding to your moral leadership. Today's Florida sunshine is no warmer than the affection that you will meet. I began a moment ago by quoting from one document of the Second Vatican Council. Permit me to close by quoting from a second. By the hidden and kindly mystery of God's will, a supernatural solidarity reigns among men. A consequence of this is that one person's holiness helps others. Today Americans feel this solidarity. And we thank you for the courage and sanctity, the kindness and wisdom which with you have done so much to help our troubled world. On behalf of all Americans, your holiness, welcome back. Mr. President, dear friends, dear people of America, it is a great joy for me once again to be in your country. And I thank you for your warm welcome. I am deeply grateful to you all. I express my special thanks to the President of the United States, who honors me by his presence here today. I thank the Bishop's Conference and all the individual bishops who have invited me to their dioceses and who have done so much to prepare for my visit. My cordial greetings and good wishes go to all the people of this land. I thank you for opening your hearts to me and for supporting me by your prayers. I assure you of my own prayers. To everyone, I repeat on this occasion what I said on that memorable day in 1979 when I arrived in Boston. On my part, I come to you, America, with sentiments of friendship, reverence, and esteem. I come as one who already knows you and loves you, as one who wishes you to fulfill completely your noble destiny of service to the world, today like then. I come to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to all those who freely choose to listen to me, to tell again the story of God's love in the world, to spell out once more the message of human dignity with its inalienable human rights and its inevitable human duties, like so many before me coming to America and to this very city of my own. I come as a pilgrim, a pilgrim in the cause of justice and peace and human solidarity striving to build up the one human family. I come here as a pastor, the pastor of the Catholic Church to speak and pray with the Catholic people. The team of my visit, unity in the work of service, affords me welcome opportunity to enter into even deeper communion with them in our common service to the Lord. It also enables me to experience ever more keenly with them their hopes and joys, their anxieties and grief. I come as a friend, a friend of America and of all Americans, Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Jews, people of every religion and all men and women of good will. I come as a friend of the poor and the sick and the dying, those who are struggling with the problems of each day, those who are rising and falling and stumbling on the journey of life, those who are seeking and discovering and those not yet finding the deep meaning of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. And finally, I come to join you as you celebrate the bicentennial of the great document, the Constitution of the United States of America. I willingly join you in your prayer and thanksgiving to God for the providential way in which the Constitution has served the people of this nation for two centuries. For the Union, for the Union it has formed the justice it has established, the tranquility and peace it has ensured, the general welfare it has promoted and the blessings of liberty it has secured. I join you also in asking God to inspire you as Americans who have received so much in freedom and prosperity and human enrichment, all countries of the world who are still waiting and hoping to live according to standards worth of the children of God with great enthusiasm. I look forward to being with you in the days ahead. Meanwhile, my prayer for all of you dear people of America is this, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord let His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace. God bless America.