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                             Vatican Information Service.   
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                                  VIS-Press releases   
      
   VATICAN LIBRARY: HISTORICAL MEMORY OF UNIVERSAL CHURCH   
      
   VATICAN CITY, 11 NOV 2010 (VIS) - The Holy Father has written a Letter to   
   Cardinal Raffaele Farina S.D.B., archivist and librarian of Holy Roman Church,   
   to mark the reopening of the Vatican Apostolic Library and the inauguration of   
   an exhibition entitled: "Knowing the Vatican Library. A History Open to the   
   Future".   
      
   "Pre-eminent location of the universal Church's historical memory, home to   
   venerable examples of the manuscript tradition of the Bible, the Vatican   
   Library yet has another reason justifying the attention and concern of Popes.   
   Since its origins it has always shown an unmistakeable openness, truly   
   'Catholic' and universal, to all the beauty and goodness ... which humankind   
   has produced over the course of the centuries".   
      
   "Nothing of what is truly human is foreign to the Church which, for this   
   reason, has always sought, gathered and conserved - with a continuity that   
   knows few equals - the finest results of man's efforts to raise himself above   
   the purely material plane as he searches, either consciously or unconsciously,   
   for the Truth".   
      
   "The Vatican Library is not, then, a theological or prevalently religious   
   library. Faithful to is humanistic origins it is, by vocation, open to all   
   things human, and thus it is remains at the service of culture. ... Also   
   through the efforts of this institution, the Church intends today - as she did   
   five centuries ago - to serve all mankind, inscribing this particular ministry   
   into the broader picture of the essential ministry that makes her Church: the   
   community that evangelises and saves".   
   MESS/VIS 20101111 (260)   
      
   SUMMARY   
      
   --- MPost/386 v1.21   
    * Origin: Sursum Corda! BBS =Meridian, MS= bbs.sursum-corda.com (1:396/45)