An all -field speech that of Pope Leo to the operators of justice. An audience, the one for their jubilee, which was moved from the Own Paul VI to Square San Pietro for the large turnout of people. In all, over 15 thousand from 100 countries around the world, with particularly numerous delegations from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, France, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Australia, Nigeria, Peru and the Philippines. Jurists, university professors, magistrates. In the square also the Minister of Justice Nordio and Samuel Atito, judge of the Supreme Court of US justice and representatives of the Constitutional Court, of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, of the Court of Cassation, of the National Association Magistrates, to mention only some of those present.
To them and the world Leone recalls the function of justice, which is “indispensable both for the orderly development of society and as a cardinal virtue that inspires and directs the consciousness of every man and woman”. It “is called to perform a higher function in human coexistence, which cannot be reduced to the naked application of the law or to the work of the judges, nor to limit themselves to the procedural aspects”. Recalls the biblical expressions. Psalm 45, “love justice and wickedness detest”, which reminds us to avoid evil and cultivate the good and wisdom of the “maximum” give each of his own “! ». In each, the Pontiff recalls, there is “that thirst for justice which is the tool-cardine to build the common good in every human society. In justice, in fact, the dignity of the person are combined, his relationship with the other and the dimension of the community made of coexistence, structures and common rules. A circularity of the social relationship that focuses on the value of each human being, to be preserved through justice in the face of the different forms of conflict that can arise in individual action, or in the loss of common sense that can also involve the devices and structures “.
Justice, Leone still says, “consists in the” constant and firm will to give God and close to what is due to them “. In this perspective, for the believer, justice has “to respect the rights of each and establish in human relations the harmony that promotes equity towards people and the common good”, an objective that becomes a guarantor of an order to protect the weak, of the one who asks for justice because it is a victim of oppression, excluded or ignored “.
He speaks of justice “capable of defeating the evil of abuse”, but also of that “superior justice that pays the last hour worker like the one who works all day; Or the one that makes mercy the key to interpretation of the relationship and leads to forgive by welcoming the son who was lost and was found, or even more to forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven. It is the strength of forgiveness that is proper to the commandment of love that emerges as a constitutive element of justice capable of combining the supernatural with human “.
Evangelical justice, although not distinguishing from the human one, however pushes to go further, to the “search for reconciliation. Evil, in fact, should not only be sanctioned, but sheltered, and a profound look towards the good of people and the common good is needed. A arduous task, but not impossible for those who, aware of carrying out a more demanding service than others, undertakes to keep an irreproachable conduct of life ».
Justice becomes concrete “when it tends towards others, when everyone is made as far as it is due, to achieve equality in dignity and opportunities between human beings”. He denounces the “growing discrimination that have as their first effect precisely the lack of access to justice” and underlines that “true equality is the possibility given to everyone to carry out their aspirations and to see the rights inherent in their dignity guaranteed by a system of common and shared values, capable of inspiring rules and laws on which to found the functioning of the institutions”.
Above all, it is necessary to seek and recover the “forgotten values in coexistence, their care and their respect. It is a useful and dutiful process, in the face of the affirmation of behaviors and strategies that show contempt for human life since its first manifest, which deny basic rights for personal existence and do not respect the consciousness from which freedoms arise “.
In his long speech the Pontiff quotes Sant’Agostino: “Justice is not such if it is not at the same time prudent, strong and temperate” and recalls that “when justice is exercised, we place ourselves at the service of people, the people and the state, in a full and constant dedication. The greatness of justice does not decrease when practicing it in small things, but always emerges when it is applied with fidelity to the right and respect for the person in any part of the world is found ».
And finally, he asks to reflect on what happens in the world, “on the reality of many countries and peoples who have” hunger and thirst for justice “, because their living conditions are so unfair and inhuman that they are unacceptable”. Remember the words of Sant’Agostino again: «Without justice the state cannot be administered; It is impossible that the right is in a state where you are not true justice. The act that is carried out according to right is certainly fulfilled according to justice and it is impossible that the act that is performed against justice (…) The state, in which one does not have justice is not a state, is impossible. In fact, justice is the virtue that distributes their own. Therefore man’s justice is not the one who subtracts man himself from the true God ». To say that the exercise of justice must be “at the service of the people, with the gaze addressed to God, so as to fully respect the justice, the right and the dignity of people”.
