The principal apostolate we Christians must carry out in the world, and the best witness we can give of our faith, is to help bring about a climate of genuine charity within the Church. For who indeed could feel attracted to the Gospel if those who say they preach the Good News do not really love one another, but spend their time attacking one another, spreading slander and quarrelling?

It is all too easy, and very fashionable, to say that you love everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike. But if those who maintain this ill-treat their brothers in the faith, I don't see how their behaviour can be anything but 'pious hypocrisy'. By contrast, when in the Heart of Christ we love those 'who are children of the same Father, and with us share the same faith and are heirs to the same hope' then our hearts expand and become fired with a longing to bring everyone closer to Our Lord.

I am reminding you here of the demands of charity, and perhaps someone might object that it is precisely the virtue of charity which is lacking in what I have just said. Nothing could be further from the truth. I can assure you with a holy pride and without any false ecumenism that I was overjoyed when in the recent Second Vatican Council the Church expressed with renewed intensity its concern to bring the Truth to those who walk outside the one Way, that of Jesus; because I am consumed by a hunger that all may be saved.