Meeting with Members of the Spanish Parliament: Address of the Holy Father

I thank the President for her kind words, as well as for the invitation the Apostolic See received on the occasion of my visit to this country. I am also grateful for the courtesy of welcoming me to this historic Palace of the Congress of Deputies, a prominent center of the institutional, legal and democratic life of the Kingdom of Spain. I come before you as the Bishop of Rome and Shepherd of the Catholic Church, aware that the mission entrusted to the Successor of the Apostle Peter, as the principle and foundation of the unity of the Bishops and the faithful (cf. Lumen Gentium, 23), places the Holy See, in a special way, in dialogue with peoples and with States.

My presence among you is intended as a gesture of closeness to Spain, within the framework of mutual cooperation, and as a message offered in the spirit of service to the human person. The Church “walks alongside humanity,” shares its hopes and its wounds, listens to the questions of every age and allows herself to be challenged by “everything concerning the lives of contemporary men and women.” For this reason, when the Church addresses anything concerning public life, she does so while respecting the proper mission of institutions and the legitimate responsibility of those who have received the mandate to legislate. She recognizes “the autonomy of earthly realities” and “the distinction between the ecclesial community and the political community”; and, precisely from this awareness, the Church offers a reflection born of the desire to serve the common good and to recall what makes human coexistence truly human (cf. Magnifica Humanitas, 18, 19, 22).

In this chamber, social coexistence takes legal form. Here, differences are heard, sorted out, and, when possible, transformed into shared decisions. For this reason, beyond the legitimate diversity of positions, every legislative task ultimately confronts a decisive question: what conception of the human person inspires laws, and what kind of society do those laws build?

In this regard, Spain has a particularly rich heritage. Its geographical and political identity is intertwined with a history in which faith and reason, art and law, tradition and thought have come together in a fruitful manner. In its cathedrals and universities, its immortal literature, its legal institutions and the very spirit of its people, endures a heritage that has shaped its way of living out freedom, practicing justice and organizing communal life.

From the timeless pages of Don Quixote, where Cervantes proclaimed that “freedom… is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men” (Don Quixote de la Mancha, II, 58), to the spiritual depth of Saint Teresa of Ávila, and from the great Spanish legal tradition to the metaphysical restlessness of Unamuno, who recalled that man “was not resigned to die utterly” (The Tragic Sense of Life, I), Spain has known how to view the human being as more than just a cog in the social, economic or political order. It has recognized the human being as a creature open to truth, endowed with freedom, and driven by a thirst for eternity that no temporal reality can quench — in a word, as someone whose dignity takes precedence over all utility and to whose service legislative action is subject.

For this reason, when speaking today of the human person, this reflection naturally leads to Salamanca and the thought that matured there. The symbolic presence in this hall of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella recalls the moment when Spain found itself facing historic responsibilities of universal scope. A few years later, Salamanca would undertake, with particular clarity, the moral and legal reflection that the situation demanded. At that university, five hundred years ago, when new worlds and immense possibilities were opening up in relations among peoples, some teachers understood that reason could not be invoked to legitimize whatever force or self-interest that seemed convenient. They thus introduced into historical discernment the question of the irreducible value of every human being and the moral limits of power. It must be acknowledged that society and the Church herself did not always live up to these insights found in their own Christian tradition.

However, that question opened up an intellectual and moral horizon that transcended its historical moment. The intuition of the totus orbis — of a human community broader than any particular power — made it possible to affirm the existence of legal and moral bonds among peoples. From Spain, the reflections of the School of Salamanca — and in particular those of Fray Francisco de Vitoria, along with other Dominicans and Jesuits — helped to shape a legal and moral consciousness capable of remembering that authority always entails responsibility and that every human being must be recognized as a subject of rights and duties. That aspiration continues to resonate today: that dignity, justice and the common good should be the measure of social relations, both at the national and international levels.

This is one of Spain’s great legacies: having united historical action with the clarity of moral reason. That contribution, born on the banks of the Tormes, transcended classrooms and libraries, and became part of a broader consciousness, shared by the international community, which continues to ask itself how to build peace on the recognition of the person and not on the imposition of force. That legacy also lives on in this Parliament, every time lawmakers ask themselves how to ensure that what is possible is just, that what is legal is truly humane, and that the will of the majority safeguards those goods that belong to all and respects that which no majority can legitimately violate.

The “Salamanca Question” continues to guide the work of those who serve in public life. Today, the new worlds opening up before us are no longer marked on maps: they unfold in technology, the economy, biomedicine, and the digital realm, where human power reaches into increasingly sensitive areas of personal and social life.

Read the full address on the Vatican's website.