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POPE-VOLUNTEERS Sep-10-2007 (440 words) With photos. xxxi
Volunteer service essential to society, pope tells charity workers
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service
VIENNA, Austria (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI met with Austrian volunteers and told them their generous and unpaid service to others was essential to modern society.
"Love of neighbor" can never simply be delegated to the state but demands personal commitment in order to keep its human dimension, the pope said.
He spoke Sept. 9 in a Viennese concert hall to some 1,800 representatives of volunteer organizations, including those run by the church and by nonchurch organizations in Austria. It was the last major event of a three-day papal visit to the country.
The 80-year-old pope, smiling and walking briskly, entered the gilded hall to an ovation. He took his seat next to Austrian President Heinz Fischer, whom church sources said had pressed for the papal encounter with volunteers.
Austria has a strong history of charitable action inside and outside the country, and in a talk the pope praised what he called its remarkable "culture of volunteerism."
He said that to allow oneself to be called to service to others, without the usual questions about whether it is useful or profitable, is a path taken by many saints through the centuries and is no less relevant today.
Unpaid service has much to do with God's grace, he said, and it challenges the thinking of "a culture which would calculate the cost of everything."
"Without volunteer service, society and the common good could not, cannot and will not endure. A readiness to be at the service of others is something which surpasses the calculus of outlay and return: It shatters the rules of a market economy," he said.
He said the state does have a responsibility to provide social services to the needy, but can never replace personal involvement. A society's progress, he said, depends on people who do more than what is strictly their duty.
The pope said volunteerism fits perfectly with Christ's teaching about love and sacrifice. Not everyone today has learned these lessons, he said.
"There are people who see but pretend not to see, who are faced with human needs but remain indifferent. This is part of the coldness of our present time," he said.
The Christian, he said, has an "absolute duty" to take notice of the needs of others.
Like many of the papal events in Austria, the meeting with volunteers featured orchestral interludes.
This encounter was unusual, however, in that the pope did not occupy center stage -- that was where the orchestra sat. The pope and other dignitaries sat off to the side, against a wall of the concert hall.
END
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