Vatican state secretary delivers lecture at Belarusian State University about relationship between science and religion

The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone on June 19 delivered a lecture to students and professors at Belarusian State University about the relationship between science and religion.

The cardinal greeted those present on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI and pointed out that the pontiff had had a long and distinguished academic career, and that he himself had served as university rector for two years. The need to resist challenges emerging on all continents makes dialogue between faith and reason and between culture and faith all the more important, Msgr. Bertone said.

Telling modern people about God is a subject that concerns everyone who is looking for meaning, he noted. People in “this wonderful country,” who have survived many difficulties and hardships to enter a new historical period, cannot but start asking questions about the meaning of life, which to a great extent overlap with the subject of God, the cardinal said.

The Vatican’s second-in-command arrived in Belarus on June 18 on a five-day official visit. He was scheduled to meet with Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Leanid Hulyaka, the government’s commissioner on religious and ethnic affairs, lead a mass in the Cathedral Church of the Most Holy Virgin Mary in Minsk, and visit Minsk’s Serabranka neighborhood to consecrate the cornerstone of the St. John the Baptist Church, which will be the first Catholic church to be built in the city since 1910.

The cardinal was also expected to visit Hrodna and Pinsk, meet with members of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Belarus and believers at Minsk’s St. Simon and St. Helena Church, and lay flowers at the World War II obelisk on Minsk’s Victory Square. //BelaPAN

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